Ice Breaking on Rondout Creek

The five-minute video at the end provides the sound:  violent and jarring.  But first, try to conjure up what you think you’ll hear from the following images.  Remember, double-click to enlarge x 3 an image.

Air temperature  at the Rondout this morning registered a scant seven degrees at daybreak.  Morro Bay, heading north on the Hudson about a half mile away, seemed like a phantom.

Cornell had an icebreaking assignment;  any strands of its pudding frozen into the ice will be plucked as the tugboat breaks free after a mere two frigid days on the dock.

Ice thickness was more than half a foot.  According to this site, 3-inch ice can support a person and 10-inch, a car.  Of course, there are other variables.

In seven-degree air temperature, freshwater ice refreezes minutes after being broken.

After heading up to Feeney Shipyard breaking one swath, we headed back to break another, all the way out to where Rondout Light marks the  mouth of the Creek.

Out in the Hudson, Dann Marine Towing’s Zeus pushes a cement barge northward, following the track opened by Morro Bay,

a track  which a short time later seems lost, dissipated like a boat wake in summertime or a trail in a windy desert.

Now brace yourself with the sound of water cracking.

Compare the sound of the Rondout with that of Bowsprite’s Raritan.

And here’s Harold’s video of Hudson River traffic as seen from the Poughkeepsie walkway.

Fotos and video by Will Van Dorp.

See my first Cornell video here.