Monday, April 23, 2007

Ice breakup


Saturday afternoon I was having tea with Marie at her house when she exclaimed, "It's moving", and indeed it was though the brain had a hard time believing it. The whole white snow/ice mixture was moving down the river. There had been a small channel of clear water already visible but now the whole thing was on the move. It did this for about 10 minutes and then it stopped. Just like that. Nothing. And then 10 minutes later it started again. Whenever it snagged on things the ice would bunch up. At times it looked like it was the stern of a boat plowing through; other times it looked alien all these dirty black clumps that had rippled over the top but now were being carried along en mass. The huge pieces of ice by the side of the river were buckling and eventually broke off and were carried away. It was noisy but not as loud as I had expected. A few years ago I read about northern rivers during breakup and that really me want to see one. Such luck and serendipity that I was at Marie's with her windows overlooking the river and with her eagle eyes spotting the start of the change. 45 minutes later the drama was mostly over now the river is just an open channel with a few ice chunks floating down. At the point where the Heart river joins the Peace there was quite a pile up of ice. The fear was that the ice would pile up and block the flow of the river or a huge pile would hit the bridge, but nothing of the sort happened and so those worried about flooding can relax.
These aren't pictures of the Peace, but i wanted to give you some visual of what I was talking about.







2 comments:

Two Mittens said...

I love ice. I find it entirely awesome!
It's great that you got to witness that springtime moment.

Mrs. M said...

Very cool. And here our rivers never totally freeze. Bizarre.
One day I would love to see icebergs. They amaze me.