For those of us who grew up in a cold-weather climate, we likely have fond memories of winter snow. Before adulthood meant being required to shovel a driveway or sit in snowy traffic on the way to work, snow meant a possible day off from school, snowball fights, and maybe even seeing if your tongue really sticks to a frozen pole. (Spoiler alert: It does. Don't try that at home, kids!)
But one meteorologist is warning against breaking off and eating one of the icicles growing on your gutter and she has a pretty convincing reason not to do it: There's probably poop in them.
Katie Nikolaou, a meteorologist with KMEG in Sioux City, Iowa, went viral on Tik Tok explaining her reasoning.
"Please don't do that. I'm a meteorologist, I should know," she said in the video. "When icicles form it's from water that runs off your roof. You know what else is on your roof? Bird poop. A lot of it."
"That water picks it up and freezes it in the ice," she added. "You're eating poop."
While TODAY cannot confirm or deny if there is bird poop on everyone's roof, it does seem plausible to assume that there is on at least some roofs and therefore it seems reasonable to avoid eating icicles to avoid ingesting that.
"Icicles contain all kinds of contaminants," Nikolaou said in a follow-up video. "From leaves to potentially dead squirrel bodies if they're up on your roof...maybe a trace or a hint of a lost basketball that you just couldn't get down, yeah, that could all be in icicles."
While you're at it, you might want to reconsider eating the snow as well. In a recent segment on TODAY, meteorologist Dylan Dreyer explained that each snowflake forms around a particle of some sort, be it pollution or dust or some sort of debris. She held up a plastic water bottle she had saved of melted snow from the North Pole to show her son, Cal, someday and noted there were small particles floating around.
"I wouldn't drink it," she said.
So there you have it!
