Lake Michigan has transformed into a terrifyingly beautiful pit of ice shards

Spring has sprung in the United States and Lake Michigan has begun to thaw in a terrifyingly beautiful fashion, transforming into what looks like an enormous pit of broken glass.

Images of the bizarre phenomenon have taken the Internet by storm, going viral on Twitter.

You'd be forgiven for mistaking the sight for something out of a horror film, but it turns out the spectacle has occurred from completely natural causes.

As Lake Michigan continues to thaw, water underneath the ice has pushed broken sheets up to the surface — making for a stunning sight along portions of the lake, including the South Haven Pier, according to Today.

Lake Michigan is the third largest lake in America, with an area of 57,757 square kilometres and this year, 56 per cent of that was covered in ice as of March 8, 2019.

The ice formations look stunning, but are not safe for people to explore.

"No ice is safe ice, especially this time of year," U.S. Coast Guard boatswain’s mate chief petty officer Grant Heffner told Michigan Live. "The ice is certainly deteriorating and breaking up."

The ice owes its incredible blueish hue to the fact Lake Michigan has no bubbles, allowing for short wavelength light to penetrate and scatter in the water and reflect back through the ice, George Leshkevich, a field scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, told USA Today.

"In deep, midlake water, where chlorophyll content is low, the reflection of the water can make the ice look even bluer," he said.