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River Bum Blog: Watching water melt

The return of open water on the river is a lengthy process which happens quickly.

By Greg Seitz | March 29, 2019 | < 1 minute read

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The return of open water is a lengthy process that happens quickly.
Video recorded on Monday, March 25 by John Goodfellow, sped up approximately six times to show about 30 seconds of movement.

The flip side of spring flooding is open water. We’ve been waiting for it to flow again for months. We’ve watched and wondered when the ice would go out.

We’ve dreamed about the feeling of floating.

When it does finally give way, we are reminded it is not one event, it takes days of breaking up and jamming together again. Mornings are motionless, afternoons are alive.

The temperature rises and falls, and we keep waiting and watching.

The ice officially started to move in Marine last Sunday at 5 p.m., according to a local resident who kept official track for the city’s ice-out contest. Jamie Flaten had the closest guess.

Twice, I was alerted the huge sheets of ice were starting to move, and twice I ran down with my camera to try to record this fleeting annual event, the brief moment of break-up. Both times, the ice had jammed itself at slight bends in the river, locked up again.

Eluding my observation, over the course of a couple days, the floes broke down small enough to move, and the river was in motion again.

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Comments

  1. Julie Grecian says

    March 30, 2019 at 8:04 am

    Fun video!

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