Sunday, January 16, 2005
Ice on the Bow
Sunday night here, and the Chinook winds are sweeping over us, driving the temperature up. Yesterday it was -23, today -13 and right now (9pm, watching part 5 of Himalaya) it's a balmy -2.5. We've just been barbecuing and it's positively tropical on the deck. For the last few weeks anytime the back door is opened, P will immediately shout "Shut that door before you freeze the house" but tonight it's so warm that we've left the door open to facilitate barbecue access. We even went for a walk around Tuscany today, for the first time this month!
We were down in Kensington yesterday for a few hours and we saw something for the first time that we'll never forget. The Bow River starts up in Bow Lake, north of Lake Louise, and then joins with the Kananaskis and the Ghost Rivers before reaching Bearspaw Dam which is close to Tuscany. It then flows through the city of Calgary, picking up the Elbow River on the way and it flows on east, all the way to Medicine Hat and the South Saskatchewan River and thence on further east, finally emptying into the vast expanse of Hudson Bay and the Atlantic. So it you drop a Pooh-stick into the Bow River in Tuscany, it could end up washing up on the shores of Donegal (if you're lucky).
The Bow River
In the summer, the Bow looked like this:
At the moment, up in Tuscany and the North-West, the river is sluggish and slow-flowing. Patches of ice stretch out from the banks and the main flow is full of mini-icebergs:
But further downstream the river is wider and shallower and the flow is slower and it looks like this:
The whole thing is frozen solid for as far as the eye can see! Wow! And the pressure of the water flowing underneath and new ice forming creates heaps of ice on the banks, like the ice is trying to climb out:
The ice is pretty thick too, although no-one is brave enough to walk on it:
The height of the ice makes it look like the bridge is sinking into it:
We had to wrap up warm yesterday, though, as it was still pretty cold:
The weather has been very cold and very dry recently, which makes the snow and ice do funny things. At the moment, it looks like the streets have been littered with big slabs of old polystyrene slabs which have been ripped up and dumped in piles here and there:
The snow and ice do funny things to the digital camera too. This was our first attempt at a 'river photo':
and this was our second:
Odd, eh?
And lastly, don't miss the latest blockbuster at Xtra-Vision, Northern's Eleven (provided by Mel). And if you have any information on the robbery, please phone Andy Garcia, or Martin McGuiness.
We were down in Kensington yesterday for a few hours and we saw something for the first time that we'll never forget. The Bow River starts up in Bow Lake, north of Lake Louise, and then joins with the Kananaskis and the Ghost Rivers before reaching Bearspaw Dam which is close to Tuscany. It then flows through the city of Calgary, picking up the Elbow River on the way and it flows on east, all the way to Medicine Hat and the South Saskatchewan River and thence on further east, finally emptying into the vast expanse of Hudson Bay and the Atlantic. So it you drop a Pooh-stick into the Bow River in Tuscany, it could end up washing up on the shores of Donegal (if you're lucky).
The Bow River
In the summer, the Bow looked like this:
At the moment, up in Tuscany and the North-West, the river is sluggish and slow-flowing. Patches of ice stretch out from the banks and the main flow is full of mini-icebergs:
But further downstream the river is wider and shallower and the flow is slower and it looks like this:
The whole thing is frozen solid for as far as the eye can see! Wow! And the pressure of the water flowing underneath and new ice forming creates heaps of ice on the banks, like the ice is trying to climb out:
The ice is pretty thick too, although no-one is brave enough to walk on it:
The height of the ice makes it look like the bridge is sinking into it:
We had to wrap up warm yesterday, though, as it was still pretty cold:
The weather has been very cold and very dry recently, which makes the snow and ice do funny things. At the moment, it looks like the streets have been littered with big slabs of old polystyrene slabs which have been ripped up and dumped in piles here and there:
The snow and ice do funny things to the digital camera too. This was our first attempt at a 'river photo':
and this was our second:
Odd, eh?
And lastly, don't miss the latest blockbuster at Xtra-Vision, Northern's Eleven (provided by Mel). And if you have any information on the robbery, please phone Andy Garcia, or Martin McGuiness.
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