Floe vs Flow

   The recent cold weather reminded me of one my columns from a couple years ago Jan. 2014. 

      

                                                          

   A couple of weeks ago I 

stood on my lower deck on 

the river to get some  

photos of the hoarfrost.

 While standing there taking in the beauty a loud boom almost made me jump out of my skin. The sheet of ice that extended from the shore out into the river had cracked its full length. The deck at this time of year is about three feet above the ice so I was in no danger. The recent below zero weather has made us all aware of the term “polar vortex.” It's that air stream that should stay put north of here. Along with it came some changes of scenery in the river valley. A major one was the ice sheet that expanded on both sides of the river. The cold spell didn't last long enough for the ice to close ranks across the river, although the additional ice did send the waterfowl and bald eagles to the more open areas of the river. I had been seeing a few bald eagles on a daily basis, but I haven't seen any eagles here since the start of the cold spell.
 

These are recent photos 

12/2016.    

  

     When the vortex shifted back north, the ice started to break up. I returned home from work one day to find large sheets of ice floating by. The high winds out of the north changed the direction of their journey down river. It sent them from their westward trip to the southern shore line. They soon encountered the rock bars in front of my home. Their broken points looked like slabs of alabaster jutting into the air. My mind wandered off to days gone by when logs were cut and floated down river. How often did they break loose creating the same scene? Some of the waterfowl are still here but they do have to move out of the way for the occasional stray chuck of ice. In this area we're still waiting for the return of the northern bald eagles.

  

    

This photo is from 2014.                                                                    

 

      








 

      An old news item had ties to this act of nature. I often wondered why the boat crews of the big ice breakers don't move their ships before the ice slowly forms behind it. As it turns out it's ice flows that trap them. During the night ice chunks much larger than what I witnessed gather and freeze into a large mass, filling in the path the ships had made coming in. As it does here, in time the weather and flow changes, freeing the ship.

  
     I looked for some facts about ice flows to share with you but didn't find much. The first thing I found out was that what I saw is spelled ice floe, (ice floating on water) not changed above. Ice flow is the spreading of large bodies of ice like glaciers over land masses. Ice floes can cause ice dams which in turn flood river basin. 

                                The ice dams on our roofs are another story.

       

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