Rivers don't care about politics

Walking every day through the parks and over the local bridges that cross the Rideau river, I'm aware of the gradual changes in the ice's consistency. What's floating down the river now is much thinner ice than a week ago, so presumably some melt is happening further upstream.

Here's a picture of the ice approaching the Rideau Falls on its way past the buildings now used by the government's department of Foreign Affairs, with the Unity Tower in the background and the sun's reflection glinting in the foreground. Since September 2011, the place has officially been known as the John G. Deifenbaker Building, though most people still refer to it as 111, Sussex Drive, or the Old City Hall. On the other side of King Edward Avenue, but effectively next door to it, at 125 Sussex Drive, is the Lester B. Pearson building. Diefenbaker and Pearson were political rivals in the early '60s so this juxtaposition is presumably deliberate.

The river doesn't care, though!

Ducks are back

I always assumed that the ice breaking operations on the Rideau River finished just upstream from Cummings Bridge, where the rapids are, but today I caught a glimpse of the Amphibex well beyond that point, and the "growlers" that have been artificially broken off the main body of ice continue to sail down the river towards the falls.

Rideau Falls, March 2013, photo by Chris Hobbs

We went to look at the falls at the weekend, very full now and with huge chunks of ice splashing into the river below. It's a dramatic spectacle. The mere picture above cannot convey the noise, the dampness from the spray, the smell of the river water, and the dizziness you feel standing on that bridge and watching all that water in rapid motion just below you. Compare the picture above with the one taken on March 3rd and you can see how much ice on the falls themselves has been dislodged by the sheer force of the water during the last couple of weeks.

It hasn't taken the local ducks long to find the water that's been cleared. I think we saw nine goldeneyes near our house, but what do they find to live on? The freshwater shrimps and the weeds below the surface, I assume. It must be extremely cold in the water, just now.

If you're interested in spotting birds, by the way, there's a list of recent sightings on this page of the Ottawa Field-Naturalists' Club website.

Ice-smashing, continued

Yesterday, the Weather Network published an article about the removal of ice from the Rideau River. Here's an interesting statistic from it:

Prior to the Amphibex's introduction, as much as 8,000 kilograms of dynamite would be used, scarring the riverbed and killing some wildlife. Today, only between 700 and 1,500 kilograms is used, limiting the damage.

The task costs something like $500,000, apparently. Another fact I learned for the first time from this article was that the"annual ice-smashing exercise in Ottawa has been in effect for more than a century."

This year I see that the river men have been making a sort of rectangular grid of trenches on the melting surface to facilitate the break-up of the ice. It looks like a giant game board, with the Amphibex and its workers working from rectangle to rectangle as it slowly makes its way from one side of the river to the other. By the end of today, they'll be past our house.

Blasted ice again

I don't mean the icicles that hang by the wall in the melt-freeze-melt-freeze sequence that always occurs at this time of year. I refer to the rivers––it's happening again: they are dynamiting the ice near the bridges on Sussex Drive and the Minto Bridges, just above the Rideau Falls. Yesterday, in fact, a section of Sussex Drive was closed all day during these operations.

Our house shakes and rattles from the explosions. We watched the operations for a while today, three sticks of dynamite being used at a time, and then the ice floes slowly move away from the continuous river ice towards the Falls where they break into fragments as they tip over.

The Rideau Falls, this morning, photograph by Chris Hobbs

The "nibbler," as my husband calls it, meaning the amphibious excavator which I have featured in this blog before, has been at work on the Ottawa River below the Rideau Falls, making room for the extra ice that's coming over. This year a reporter on the CBC radio program, Ottawa Morning, Hallie Cotman, had a ride on the amphibex. From the recording you can hear how noisy the machine is. The reporter also sounds rather nervous, on board. The crew teased her!

http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/Local+Shows/Ontario/ID/2338952306