When the coldest moment of winter arrives and temperatures drop extremely, A giant ice tower appears in the Almaty region of Kazakhstan.
Every year, hundreds of tourists go to Keguen, in Almaty, to observe this curious natural formation that, Although it has been nicknamed as a volcano, it does not spit lava but water.
Amusingly, it is not actually a volcano either.
How is the ‘ice volcano’ formed?
The ‘tower’ is actually more like a cylinder or a cone and has a channel through which springs flow, which are the real reason for its existence.
Underground hot springs react with the cold air characteristic of winterwhich causes the striking figure for which it has been called a volcano to be formed.
In February 2021, for example, it reached a surprising 14 meters of ice height thanks to the low temperatures. In summer, on the contrary, a tower of ice does not sprout but a great vegetation thanks to the waters that it spews.
(Suggested reading: Do you know what the ‘raspútitsa’, Putin’s meteorological enemy, is?).
(If you read us from the EL TIEMPO app, watch this video here).
Year after year, tourists come to the frozen plain where the ‘volcano’ is located, as it is only a four-hour drive from Nur-Sultan, the capital of the Almaty region.
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These are some of the photos that visitors have posted of the amazing tower.
(If you read us from the EL TIEMPO app, see this publication here).
(If you read us from the EL TIEMPO app, see this publication here).
Are there more ‘ice volcanoes’?
Despite the great size of the ‘ice volcano’ in Kazakhstan, the largest such formations discovered by humans are not even on the planet.
In the Spanish newspaper ‘El País’, for example, the discovery of ice towers was published, but on the planet Pluto.
NASA’s ‘New Horizons’ space probe found multiple ice volcanoes several kilometers high on the surface of the dwarf planet.
In addition, in the natural magazine ‘National Geographic’ they reported that Oliver White, of the Ames Research Center of the aerospace agency, said in a press conference in 2015 that “when you see a big mountain with a hole in the top it means only one thing”.
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Thus, according to experts, there really are so-called ice volcanoes, but the largest are outside planet Earth.
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