St. Paul City Council Member Dave Thune is competing this week in the National Snow Sculpting Competition in Lake Geneva, Wis.

Thune, and his team — his son Dusty Thune and their friend Chelsea Olson — took first place in last year’s Winter Carnival snow sculpting contest, which qualified them for the nationals.

They’ll build a hot tube time machine in the contest, inspired by the 2010 movie.

This is their first time in the national contest, Thune said today from Wisconsin, where they’ll compete against 14 teams from around the nation, including Alaska.

Each team starts with a cylinder of snow 8 feet wide and 9ine feet tall.

“There’s no snow here, either,” he said. “They had to bring some in from a ski hill.”

Last weekend, the St. Paul Winter Carnival had to cancel its annual snow sculpting contest, the one the Thune team won last year. But figuring that the carnival needed some kind of snow presence, the team brought some snow into Rice Park from Lake Elmo, and sculpted a polar bear.