Yopo: The day after Christmas was interesting down in Marion. There had been all of that sub-zero cold the week before, then a warming trend beginning a day or two before Christmas. The ice on the Mississinewa River broke up. The river was high, turned swift, and millions of tons of ice were suddenly on the move through town like a run away freight train, taking fallen trees, branches, and the occasional pier along for the ride.
There was a lot of icy grinding, popping, and growling, punctuated with the sound of snapping wood, that went on for several hours. Later, after the river across the street had cleared, we went downstream to the dam--an old WPA construction--expecting to find masses of ice and debris heaped up there like dominoes. I was astonished to find nothing but swiftly moving water. Apparently the torrents carried everything over the top and away down the river. The only thing remaining was a log jam of fallen trees and branches blocking one span of the bridge just downstream from the dam.
Here are some snapshots of the ice on the river. Alas, they don't convey the sound, energy, motion, or scale very well.
Below: Ice breaking up on the Mississinewa River, Marion Indiana, on the day after Christmas, 2008. That's me walking along the platform that's built around a gigantic willow tree. Unfortunately it's coming apart. By the end of the day it was still there, however.
The stills really don't convey all the energy here. You've got to imagine this miles-long field of jumbled ice and debris moving along downstream at around 20 miles per hour. That's a fallen log in the background, quickly moving out of the frame to the left.
I took this photo myself, from the damaged platform seen in the topmost photograph. The ice was rushing away from me, turning the bend, and sweeping along toward the old dam around a mile or so downstream.
