Same Thing Only Different, Again

Grand River, 6 February 2008, 9:00am by John Winkelman, on Flickr
Wednesday morning at 9:00am

Grand River, 6 February 2008, 9:00am by John Winkelman, on Flickr
Wednesday morning at 9:00am

Grand River, 6 February 2008, 5:00pm by John Winkelman, on Flickr
Wednesday afternoon at 5:15pm

Rafts of slush going over the dam by John Winkelman, on Flickr
Wednesday afternoon at 5:15pm

During the day the river level dropped about six inches, which made the surface more turbulent. The snowfall yesterday was manifested as rafts of slush traveling down the river. I would guess that this will add to the mass of the ice jam, which will therefore start growing back up the river. We may yet have our very own glacier this winter.

Click on any of the photos to see the whole set of them.

Ice Jam, part 2

Proving that not only can you never step in the same river twice, you also cannot take the same photo of a river twice, here are some updates to the ice jam and flooding at the Sixth Street Bridge dam,

Grand River, February 3 2008 by John Winkelman, on Flickr
Sunday, 3 February

Grand River, February 4 2008 by John Winkelman, on Flickr
Monday, 4 February

Grand River, February 4 2008 by John Winkelman, on Flickr
Monday, 4 February

Grand River, February 4 2008 by John Winkelman, on Flickr
Monday, 4 February

Grand River, February 5 2008 by John Winkelman, on Flickr
Tuesday, 5 February

Grand River, February 4 2008 by John Winkelman, on Flickr
Tuesday, 5 February

Grand River, February 5 2008 by John Winkelman, on Flickr
Tuesday, 5 February

Photos 1, 4, 5 and 6 are all pretty much the same shot. On Sunday the river was placid, ice above and below the dam, but some water flowing through. On Monday the water level had dropped a bit, and there was a small drop between the upper and lower levels. On Tuesday all of the up-river ice had let go and jammed up just below the dam, causing the water to rise to the point that, other than a few odd swirls, there was no sign of the dam at all. I have never seen the water this high. The ice was jammed higher than this three years ago, but that was everything on top of the water. Since we are supposed to get between six and nine inches of snow in the next 24 hours, plus some sleet and freezing rain, I expect the water will rise even higher, and then everything will begin to freeze. Unless something breaks the entire ice jam loose I expect we will see some city streets under water in the next few days.

I have lived in Michigan my whole life. I have seen colder winters than this one. I have seen snowier winters than this one. But I don’t remember ever feeling as beaten down by the weather as I have since the beginning of this year.

Ice Jam

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The fish ladder. Right now there is no evidence that it is anything other than an odd concrete sculpture.

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Miles and miles of this.

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The Sixth Street bridge.

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The Brassworks Building, from the fish ladder. The dam is directly underneath the power lines.

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Eastbound (lower) and westbound (upper) I-196.

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The Titanic.

More photos of the ice jam can be found here.

366

sunset-2004

I just posted the last picture to the River Project. 366 photos, selected from something over a thousand taken over the course of the year.

I started the year with an Olympus D-510, and on March 16 switched over to a Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ10 .

The total collection of un-edited photos, used and unused, fills 4 CDs.

The 366 photos on the website take up 33.6 megabytes.

The XML data file for the gallery is just under 15k.

The Flash Photo Gallery has been completely revised three times over the course of the project.

I think now I will take a short break. Perhaps I will continue to add to the project, but it will be more informal and definitely not every day.

Thanks you for all of the support, encouragement and suggestions over the past year.

And… Happy New Year.

…Nor Any Drop to Drink

Sorry for the lack of updates; I am out of the habit of ‘blogging. When I leave work the last thing I want to do is spend more time looking at a computer; especially now, when the weather has finally turned and the monsoons are coming home to roost.

Last week Grand Rapids had a genuine mud-slide ; the first I have heard of in my fifteen years living here.

Yesterday I took a two-hour walk around Riverside Park, which was mostly under water. I have a couple of pictures up in the River Project section of es.o. They scarcely do it justice.

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The water in places reached from the river to Monroe Street, a distance of over a hundred yards. Where people usually play disc-golf, a blue heron caught fish.

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As I was leaving, a group of river pirates on jet boats invaded the park and snatched several children from the playground equipment.

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Today the river at the 6th Street Bridge dam is so high that surface tension is almost re-asserting itself; a state which would turn the dam into “just another big rock in the river”. At the fish ladder, the water on the sidewalk is knee-deep. Even when the ice let go in March the water wasn’t so high.

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Local experts say that the river could rise as much as three more feet over the next two days, which would put the water well up onto Monroe Street, and do a good job of reminding us that we live in a flood plain.

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