Due to freezing temperatures, a 20-foot ‘ice volcano’ erupts outside of the Glen Iris Inn in Castile, New York.
The following written content by Adriana Navarro
Freezing temperatures have helped transform a New York fountain from the 1800s into a 20-foot “ice volcano.”
Outside of the Glen Iris Inn in Castile, New York, a cone of ice sprays water up to some 50 feet in the air, giving off the appearance of an icy volcano. This is not an unusual sight for the Glenn Iris Fountain, however, and even the 20-foot height it has reached this winter is not the tallest it can grow.
In fact, it gained national attention in 2015, drawing tourists to its location in Letchworth State Park when it reached its full height of 50 feet. However, it’s not a motor that powers this fountain, but a more clever use of engineering.
The fountain was among the first things that New York businessman William Pryor Letchworth had built during the late 1800s while designing the property, the nearby inn once his home. In this design, location and placement mattered.
Uphill, Letchworth had a trout pond built along with a drain that leads to an underground pipe. Here, the pond water trickles downhill toward the fountain. Gravity does most of the work involved in transferring the water and, farther down, sending it cascading into the air.
The pipe ends at the pool as a nozzle, forcing the water upward.
“The gravitational pull on all the water in the pipe uphill puts a lot of pressure on the water squeezed into that tiny little nozzle, and it sprays the water 50 feet up into the air,” explained Conrad Baker, an outdoor educator with the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, in a video produced by the park.
During the summer, the water cycles through. However, during the winter, when temperatures drop below freezing, the water at the nozzle will freeze. Much like how cooled magma will form new land, the frozen ice will build upon itself reaching its full, towering height of 50 feet.
To give a sense of how cold it was to lead to the formation of the ice volcano this year, temperature records from the closest airport, the Dansville Municipal Airport, about 18 miles southeast of Castile are telling. Dansville consistently reported below-freezing temperatures every night throughout the month of February. Read more from AccuWeather.
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