The May 2013 Ice Shoves at Mille Lacs and Dauphin Lake

Ice moving from a lake towards buildings gives these May 2013 reports their unsettling power. The footage shows an ice shove: wind-driven lake ice piling onto the shore, rather than a conventional tsunami wave.

Mille Lacs and Dauphin Lake: two May 2013 events

The May 2013 coverage concerns two separate places: Mille Lacs Lake in Minnesota and Dauphin Lake in Manitoba. Footage from one shoreline and reports of damage at the other document related ice-shove events, each with its own local circumstances.

Slow-looking movement can still be destructive

A recording may make the advancing edge appear manageable while a much larger ice mass continues pressing behind it. The force moving the ice and the occupied shoreline in its path explain why the slow-looking advance could cause damage.

Explore more: loose ice moving near another Great Lakes shore; a rotating ice formation in a river.

Related reading: Typhoon Haiyan in Hernani: Nickson Gensis’s Footage.

Videos: Glaciers Visit Izatys Resort - Mille Lacs Lake, MN (published by Darla Phillips); 'Ice Tsunami' Video, Photos: Wall of Ice Rises Out of Lake, Destroys Homes (published by ABC News).

Two lakes, two reported events

At Mille Lacs Lake, ice reached the shoreline around Izatys Resort. At Dauphin Lake, the damage account concerns the Ochre Beach community. Both reports describe lake ice moving onto occupied shorelines, but they record separate events in different countries. Keeping each location attached to its footage and reported effects allows the similarities to be understood without treating the two shorelines as one place.

Mille Lacs: the advancing edge on camera

The Minnesota recording shows a mass of ice moving towards occupied lakeshore buildings. Its edge appears to creep rather than arrive as one fast-breaking wave. That visible movement explains why the video is unsettling: familiar doors, garden furniture and walls remain in the frame while the boundary between lake ice and land changes. The camera records the progression locally, not the full extent of ice around the lake.

Two names in the Minnesota video record

The Minnesota video is published under the name Darla Phillips, while the accompanying account uses Darla Johnson. The available material does not resolve that difference. The recording nevertheless provides a direct view of ice advancing towards fixed shoreline features. Spoken reactions convey the observer’s experience, while the changing position of the ice shows the movement itself; neither supplies an instrument-based measurement of speed or force.

Wind-driven ice is not a conventional tsunami

The original account attributed the movement to strong winds pushing lake ice towards shore. A tsunami normally refers to a different kind of water-wave event; here the destructive material visibly piles and presses onto land. The useful term is ice shove. The word floe, by contrast, describes a piece of floating ice rather than naming the entire shoreward process. These terms distinguish the shoreward movement from the pieces of ice involved.

Ice-Shove Dimensions and Locations

The Minnesota account quoted winds of roughly thirty to forty miles per hour and described an extended affected shoreline with large local piles. Those figures belonged to the contemporary reporting and should not be transferred to every photograph. A tall pile at one point also does not mean a uniform wall of that height along the entire coast. The views close to buildings are best read as local evidence of accumulation.

Dauphin Lake and the Ochre Beach damage

The Manitoba portion described ice driven ashore near Ochre Beach, with a reported twenty-seven homes affected, including around a dozen destroyed. Those figures come from contemporary reporting of the event. The account also referred to previous flooding in 2011, giving the community’s situation an additional history. The Canadian damage figures describe that community’s experience and should not be applied to the separate Minnesota footage.

The aftermath is part of the event

The original story describes neighbours and volunteers using shovels, wheelbarrows and larger machinery in the cleanup. Those details move the account beyond the advancing ice to the work required afterwards. A photograph of equipment beside an affected house therefore has a different role from a frame showing the ice in motion. Together they show both the physical arrival of material and the community response to what it left behind.

Movement that looks slow can still carry force

A viewer can follow the edge of the ice gradually approaching a fixed object, but that does not make the whole mass easy to stop. Material continues to press from behind, and the occupied shoreline provides obstacles against which it accumulates. The recording is useful precisely because familiar structures make that process visible. It should not be read as an invitation to stand close to a similar advancing front or a guarantee that a person can judge its consequences by speed alone.

Reading the complete collection

The Minnesota recording shows the ice in motion, while damage reporting and aftermath photographs describe what happened along affected shores. Cleanup scenes extend the story beyond the advancing front to the work of removing the accumulated material. These different records give the May 2013 events a fuller sequence: movement from the lake, contact with buildings and the response of people dealing with the ice left on land. The buildings give the ice a familiar scale: a low-looking front can accumulate into a substantial mass where the shore prevents it from moving freely.