Meteorologist Explains Gross Reason Why You Should Not Eat Icicles

Katie Nickolaou, a South Dakota television meteorologist, went viral on TikTok this week by letting viewers in on a little secret: you really shouldn't eat icicles, no matter how appealing they might look at the time. They might look like a frozen treat from the icebox, Nickolaou said on TikTok, but in fact they are runoff from excess water moving its way down your roof -- and through the dirt, germs, and bird poop that reside there. Quite a lot of bird poop, apparently, and it's enough of a concern to Nickolaou that she took to her own TikTok to present her case -- with more than a little of her local news voice creeping in.

Her funny and charming delivery helped generate more than 13 million views on her initial TikTok, and if you check out her other social media accounts, she seems bemused. A recent Twitter post is just a static photo of the icicles outside her studio that inspired the riff, which began with an anonymous Tiktok user chomping down on an icicle.

"Please don't do that. I'm a meteorologist, I should know," Nickolaou said in the TIkTok. "When icicles form it's from water that runs off your roof," she continues. "You know what else is on your roof? Bird poop. A lot of it."

You can see the orginal Tiktok post below.

@weather_katie

Don’t eat icicles! Please respect the fact that I edited out the original woman in the video (I have her permission) #IciclePoop

♬ original sound - nickolaou.weather

Her icicle hot take proved so popular, that it actually led to another one in her next Tiktok (which, while pretty popular, hasn't come close to the poop revelation). In it, Nickolaou debunked the idea of icicles as the "perfect murder weapon," noting that while icicles that fall from above can become deadly due to their momentum and weight, stabbing someone with an icicle is unlikely even to draw blood before the icicle breaks, let alone to do any serious damage.

She illustrated this with a little help from a friend, who stood still and took some stabs, first from a small icicle and then from a larger one. Both of them broke while the friend pretended to play with her phone and not notice.

The "murder weapon" theory is something that has come up in stories and jokes over and over again since the 1925 short story "The Tea Leaf" by Edgar Jepson & Robert Eustace. The idea is that killing someone with an icicle will leave no physical evidence behind, as it will eventually melt, removing both the murder weapon and the killer's fingerprints from the scene in a way that cannot be retrieved or reconstructed.