Hempfield family uses cold to make rainbow blocks for front yard igloo

The Szekely family of Hempfield wasn’t about to miss its second chance at building an igloo.

“We tried in 2018, but the weather wasn’t cold enough,” said Marta Szekely, who lives with her husband, Matt, and their children near Hempfield Park.

There isn’t much traffic in the Szekelys’ neighborhood, but anyone passing recently saw a small igloo lit up like a disco ball with ice blocks in all colors, built by the Szekelys and Marta’s brother, Andrew Raffensperger.

Since 2018, Matt has been collecting half-gallon jugs — three trash bags worth, to be exact — and when January’s cold snap moved in, he went to work.

“We filled the containers with water, used food dye to color them, and set them out to freeze,” Szekely said.

She first tried to color the blocks using liquid watercolor, which worked great on the 15-foot snow dragon the Szekelys already built in early January in their front yard.

“The liquid watercolor didn’t freeze very well,” Szekely said.

A little bit of slightly warmer weather on Jan. 26-27 didn’t worry them at all.

“If anything, the temperature might have helped,” Szekely said. “Matt and my brother Andrew ended up using snow and water to make sort of a slurry and a mortar to pack the bricks.”

The family has done plenty of snow sculptures in the past, but Szekely isn’t sure they can top the rainbow igloo.

“I think we might have peaked,” she said with a laugh.