Icicles: Winter Makes its Point

The removal of icicles longer than 10 centimeters long is required by law and enforced by authorities.

A worker banging on ice that collected near a gutter drainpipe on Leontyevsky Pereulok. St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko proposed using lasers to remove icicles from buildings, but for the time being, Moscow workers use shovel technology.

A worker trying to keep his balance while hacking at a series of icicles on Ulitsa Pokrovka. The danger of falling ice is very real — in 2007, a student in Nizhny Novgorod settled a 1.2 million ruble ($50,000 at the time) lawsuit after being hit by falling ice.

A icicle appearing to reach towards the top of the Christ the Savior Cathedral.

 A boy playing in the woods in the Vladimirskoye Region outside Moscow near some enormous icicles.

A raven sitting on a tree in the background as icicles on Ulitsa Narodnogo Opalcheniya continue their very slow melt.

Icicles imitating the downward drip pattern of the paint on the sign below stating that cars cannot park there.

From fire comes ice: When fires break out in winter, water from both burst pipes and fire hoses freezes rapidly, leaving a ghostly trace on charred buildings. Above, a man observing a sheet of icicles after a fire in January 2005 at Alexandrovsky Sad.

An officer standing guard outside the offices of newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda after a fire in February 2006.

Icicles on the Komsomolskaya Pravda building dwarfing the size of the firefighters inspecting them.

A ropelike structure of icicles clinging to the side of the Dom Na Naberezhnovo, a building across from the Christ the Savior Cathedral that used to house politicians and bureaucrats, after a fire in December 2003.

A closer look at the pattern in which water settled after the fire at Dom Na Naberezhnovo in December 2003.

A phone booth, covered with patterns of frozen water, seen after the fire at Dom Na Naberezhnovo in December 2003.

A tree buckling under the weight of icicles near an historic dacha in the Tsaritsyno neighborhood in southern Moscow that burned down in January of this year.

A shot from below of icicles creeping out of the historic dacha in Moscow's Tsaritsyno neighborhood that burned down in January of this year.