Yes, we're hyper-local for North Texas, but that doesn't mean we (speaking purely for myself) have no interest in cool (meaning cold) stuff going on outside our bailiwick.

Witness my ongoing annual fascination with the ice tower webcam maintained by those frosty folks outside of Fairbanks, where the word "winter" carries a richer meaning than just "cover your tender plants."

Since the winter of 2003-04, ice artist (and wine/cigar tester) John Reeves and his friends in the Alaska Alpine Club have been devising nozzles and periodically adding vertical piping to the center of their growing tower-of-Babelish creations, achieving heights of 152 feet (in the case of 2004-05's "Ghost Raven"). Beginning this year, they are offering a vertiginous prizes of $100 (in two categories) for the best Northern Hemisphere ice tower which is not theirs.

Why would you need an Alpine Club to maintain an ice tower? Why, to climb to the top with their ice axes and crampons and (after installation of fixed ropes) Jumars in order to add piping and raise the nozzles. Otherwise you're not gonna get much height out of your ice tower, now, are you?

How can one (even an eccentric one such as this scribbler) maintain a fascination for this sort of sub-tortoise-speed, time-lapse-only progress event? Why, by tuning in to the ice tower webcam periodically to see what's going on. (Hint: water is freezing.) Occasionally you'll actually catch people walking around the base of the structure checking things, and - if you're either damn lucky or an habitual viewer or simply clued in by notifications posted to the site - you may also be able to watch (in fifteen second cam-refreshing intervals) the progress of tower maintenance folk climbing up the side of the thing to do the nozzle relocation chores.

NOTE that, as periods of winter daylight truncate, the image you see on the cam page is going to be dark for all but a few hours each day - and also note that Fairbanks is three hours behind CST, so don't expect to see anything until after noonish in relation to North Texas time.

If you happen to be up during the wee hours and are jonesing for ice tower cams, head on over to the Lycsele (Sweden) page, where another set of frozen-in folks have been carrying on the ice tower tradition since 1995. In 1999, their tower reached a height of just under 50 meters.

Nice new touch for this season's cam view: the installation of a thermometer in the foreground. (Is it just me, or does the thermometer appear to have two "-40" settings? Looks like they overprinted the "-20" one.)