Many thanks to Birk Thomas for these fotos. That’s frozen salt water off New Jersey. ‘Nuff said.
Cold . . . but the light is pretty. That’s thought that comes easily if you’re indoors.
But for some perspective . . . according to the NYTimes, in 1813 it was so cold people could cross from Cold Spring to Connecticut on foot across the ice. The East River had enough ice cover that it became an ice bridge in 1817, 1821, 1851, and 1875. On January 20, 1875, for example, 15,000 crossed the ice bridge between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Ice thickness covering the East River measured six inches. Click here for tips on ice thickness and safety. However, as someone who icefished a number of years, I know that ice can be 12″ in one spot and not far away a pressure crack or much thinner ice. Safety has to be #1. Whitehorse today is the same temperature as the sixth boro; for really cold temperatures, click here.
tugster: a waterblog 
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January 24, 2013 at 4:20 pm
Joe
Surely ain’t fun tending to your duties out there though, recovering a lost tow in the North Sea in January gives new meaning to the ole One Hand Rule. I’ve seen the East River, much more tidal than the North River freeze hard (2001). And the North River so bad that they had to bring the East Wind up from Curtis Bay to save a threatened Single Hull Tanker up river by Albany (19??) (CRS!). In the burough they have to open up the Ferry slips and channels on the Monmouth Beach, Belford and Atlantic Highlands ports with the steel hull fishing boats this time of year.
January 24, 2013 at 10:59 pm
USS Mitscher (DDG-57) « Bowsprite: A New York Harbor Sketchbook
[…] handling these days must be damned bitter cold. […]
January 25, 2013 at 10:50 am
tugpower
EASTWIND was up in the Hudson River back in 1947, and WESTWIND in 1961. I remember seeing the WESTWIND, but EASTWIND was before my time. I served two years aboard the 110′ icebreaking tug USCGC MANITOU WYTM-60 during the winters of 1968 and 1969. The winter of 1968, we were kept quite busy in most of the choke points assisting stuck river traffic. The river at present has a little drift and brash ice between West Point & Albany, but nothing to stop any commerce from moving. Another point to remember is, that we don’t have the severe cold winters like we experienced from the late 1940’s to the early 1960’s. Also tugs boast more horsepower now than they did in that time period. I remember seeing tugs transiting the river with 1000 hp or less. From around 1961 forward, horsepower has increased from 2000 to now up to 8000 hp.