What was supposed to be the world's largest ice sculpture is now the world's biggest pile of icy rubble.
Hopes for a record-breaking ice spectacle in Superior, Wis., came crashing down Tuesday morning, the victim of weeks of unseasonably warm weather.
Minnesota artist "Iceman Roger" Hanson had been working on his six-story-tall "Lake Superior Ice Project" installation since early December, sleeping in a lakeside trailer by night and spending day after day spraying lake water onto a cable strung between two poles. As the water dripped down, it froze into fanciful shapes that inched higher every day.
The sculpture was to be a centerpiece for community gatherings, starting on Valentine's Day and running through the final weekends of February. There would have been light shows and bonfires, food vendors and family activities.
At 10:06 a.m., it collapsed.
Hanson, who was giving an interview to the New York Times at the moment it fell, posted a mesmerizing video of the fall on his Facebook page with the headline, "The Big Crash." One of the icy pillars around the sculpture's 17-foot base caved in, followed quickly by millions of pounds of ice above it. One giant cube came to rest on top of the pile like a punctuation mark.
"What are you going to do? Who are you going to fight? I can't fight the weatherman," Hanson joked later in an interview.
He's already making plans to salvage what he can and start sculpting as much as he can amid unseasonably warm weather. "Today was a big learning lesson," he said. "It's not a total failure. I'm going to try to start again."