Thursday, December 16, 2010

Winters of the past and more river ice.

Although the temperature was in the 70’s yesterday and at 08:00 this morning it was 60 degrees and will probably get back to into the 70’s before the cold front gets here, I am going to talk some about the cold.

I have had a few emails from readers who would like to see more pictures from the past. So, I would like to please them and show a few today.

This first picture is really old. It seems back then that they had photographs printed on post cards. They were professionally done with a glossy finish. Very nice, and I bet it cost a penny or two at least.

To give you a reference to how old this first picture is, I will be 68 this coming February and the Lady on the left is my Great Grandmother. The girl holding the umbrella next to my Great Grandma is my Grandmother. According to what someone had written on the back of the picture, it was taken in December of 1907; a hundred and three years ago.

I call this picture “Old Time Winter Fun”:


Let me go back to an old subject, river ice. Remember my blog posted on Dec. 5th titled “Wondering About a Strange Excuse”?

In that blog I showed pictures and told you of what the ice can do when it breaks up, goes out, and jams up. It moves houses and picks up bridges. The first three pictures below were taken from across the river from Phillipston and show what the river looks like when the ice breaks up and starts to move:
If it flows on down stream, it does not do any damage. But, when it piles up on the outside of a curve or jams up because of some obstruction, that is when it causes all the damage. This last picture is another one of the same house that I showed you in the old blog. As you can see, the actual problem here was that this house sat on the outside of a curve in the river and the ice piled up there and created a jam:
Now, go stand next to the heat and get that chill out of your bones from looking at all this ice and snow.

I always liked snow, but sometimes when I lived up north, we got too much too quick. Remind me sometime and I will tell you about the time my family and I woke up the day after Thanksgiving to find 42” of snow outside. Had to crawl out a window to get out since we could not open the doors against all that snow. Anyway, a story for another time. You all have a good day.

2 comments:

  1. On the news in Sioux City, Iowa they said the Army Corps Of Engineers were going to dynamite the river. There was an ice jam where the Big Sioux and the Missouri rivers came together. So once again I decided to skip school and I stood on the bridge over the Missouri and watched. I know it was more interesting than anything I could have learned in school that day. I could sign my mothers name better than she could. Today they would have me in kiddie jail!

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  2. I remember many a year when they tried to dynomite the ice jams. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. Arn't you glad that you skipped school and got to see things that stay in your memory?

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