Ice carousel

An ice carousel is a circular piece of ice made to spin like a carousel within a larger body of water, often a frozen lake. It is a man-made phenomenon, made by cutting the floating ice sheet, unlike the natural rotating ice circles.

History[]

In 2017, Janne Käpylehto carved one in Lohja, in Finland.^[1]

Two men created one in Burntside Lake, near Ely, Minnesota, in 2018.^[2]

An ice carousel created in Little Falls, Minnesota in early 2019 was dubbed the largest in the world.^[3]

In December 2019, on a lake in Clerval, Abitibi, Québec, Canada, a team constructed an ice carousel with a diameter of 209.7 m (688 ft 0 in) and an area of 34,307 m² (369,280 sq ft), surpassing the prior record of 155 ft (47 m) set in the United States. The feat was recognized by the , which keeps track of records.^[4]

An even larger ice carousel was cut into Lake Lappajärvi in Finland by Janne Käpylehto's team in March 2021. The carousel has a diameter of 310 m (1,017 ft 1 in) and the ice is 40 cm (1 ft 4 in) thick, giving the carousel an estimated mass of 30-40 000 tons. The team included the mayors of the three towns surrounding the crater lake.^[5]^[6]

In April of 2021, Volunteers in Saint Agatha, Maine, United States of America created an even larger ice carousel totaling 1,234 feet in diameter. Roger Morneault and the Northern Maine Ice Busters used a trencher, long-bar chainsaws and six power augers to get the job done, according to Mike Cyr who was involved in the project.^[7]