WEST MICHIGAN — Emergency responders were called to a South Haven beach over the weekend after a person fell on a Lake Michigan ice shelf, marking the second ice shelf accident in South Haven so far this winter.
With cold temperatures expected to continue in West Michigan, safety officials are reminding residents about the dangers of walking on lake ice shelves along the Lake Michigan lakeshore.
"The biggest message to get out there is no ice is safe ice," Captain Lee Adams with Grand Haven Department of Public Safety told me. "We understand that people want to come out here to the lake shore to see our unique beauty of the ice mounds. And we just ask that you appreciate it from a distance, that you stand back."
While the ice shelves stretching out from beaches may look beautiful, they are not safe opportunities for Instagram photos or casual walks.
The ice extending from Lake Michigan beaches is not as stable as ice found on inland lakes or ponds. These ice shelves form from breaking waves that freeze and carry sheets of ice to the shore, where they form together.
Unlike a continuous sheet of ice, this process leads to irregular patterns of cracks and holes in the ice. Combined with fluctuating temperatures above and below the ice, this adds significant danger as the ice can unexpectedly fail to hold a person's weight.
"What happens is people venture out there and the weight of them on those ice shelves, because the ice shelves are basically hollow underneath from those waves constantly going underneath and eating away at it, so they'll either fall off down into the water, where there's massive, 1000 pound ice chunks that can either crush a person, or they can get sucked under even further under that ice shelf, there's also what's called the ice volcanoes," Captain Adams said. "That's what a lot of people like to see, because when that water rushes underneath, it has to go somewhere. And so it'll create these little volcanoes. The problem is that those volcanoes will freeze over time, and people won't see that. And so it's, it's you walk across it, and it's very thin ice, and you fall down into that, that void, it doesn't take long for hypothermia to set in, especially with these temperatures."
Walking on ice shelves puts not only individuals in danger, but also the emergency responders who must come out to rescue them.
The dangers remain even though Lake Michigan's average ice cover this year is well above average, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
For those wanting winter photos, the National Parks Service recommends viewing ice shelves from the base of the first sand dune further inland, rather than walking on the ice itself.
This story was initially reported by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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