With sometimes hazardous and unpredictable weather awaiting them, readers gave us a firsthand look at ice storms, blizzards, freak warm spells and yes, an avalanche. Heck, you even showed us snow in the Arizona desert and southern California.

We've also been getting major kicks out of the absolutely stunning photos of ice hanging off various things. You've found snow and/or icicles on various types of lawn ornaments, fiberglass cows, golf carts, winterberries, crabapples, leaves, chairs, bicycles, barbed wire, chain-linked fences ... and each one is uniquely beautiful, like a snowflake. According to Jackalope-tracking I-Reporter Greg Holmes, it's only natural.

"I think the question is not so much why shoot photos as why not," he writes. "It's all a beautiful and natural special effect, really, like fireflies or a meteor shower or the aurora. I mean, if you'd never seen snow ... if you'd never seen ice ... they'd be new and wondrous things to you ... fleeting tableaux which are available today but plowed and grungy tomorrow, and melted away altogether soon enough."

What do you think? And has anybody seen ice hanging off garden gnomes?