Saturday, January 9, 2010

Frozen-over Wabash


Looking upstream from the pedestrian bridge. The ice floating on the Wabash River has jammed up behind the pedestrian bridge at Lafayette. These pictures were taken Friday afternoon, January 8, 2010, the ice jammed sometime Thursday evening or before dawn Friday. The ice jam likely stretches for miles upstream. The Wabash is a wild river, unlike the Mississippi which has a series of dams along its length which will capture ice floes earlier in the winter. As the ice floes on the Wabash get bigger and bigger this bridge often provides the bottleneck for the jam.



View from the downstream side of the pedestrian bridge. Several dozen mallard ducks are on the open water here.

1 comment:

Nick said...

Sunday afternoon Jan 10:

The icefloes are backed up to a point a couple miles upstream from the pedestrian bridge that is just upstream from the US 52 bridge. North of this the icefloes were also jammed by the North 9th St. bridge and the Battleground SR225 bridge. Downstream from these two bridges the river remains uncovered with ice just as at the pedestrian bridge. Downstream from North 9th St. bridge the river starts to ice over at about Heron Island with smooth ice until it reaches the tail end of the ice floes.