This weekend marks the end of the Winterlude festival (but sadly, not the end of winter yet). I found myself hanging around in Confederation park, where it all started a couple of weeks ago, thinking I will miss the ice sculptures.

And here are some of the sculptures that are at Confederation Park during Winterlude. The ice carvers did a pretty good job in my opinion… amazing what you can do with a few blocks of ice and a chainsaw!

Winterlude, Ottawa’s annual winter festival, started last week-end. It’s very cold and sunny right now in the nation capital and for once, no ones complains about it. Cold weather means that the Rideau Canal Skateway is open and that Winterlude’s ice and snow sculptures won’t melt.

After the great freeze, we woke up to the great melt. The weather was a bit warmer and all the ice accumulated had started to melt.

Trees were literally shedding ice. Every blast of wind shook the tree limbs, coated in ice — it sounded like a wind chime. We were lucky: no power line snapped in our neighborhood.

We got a bad winter surprise today when we woke up to heavy freezing rain this morning. Yuck.

Freezing rain is pretty unique to very cold countries. When surface temperatures are below freezing, raindrops freeze upon impact with any object they encounter. The resulting ice accumulates to a thickness of several centimeters and it coats just about anything.