1/11/10 THE ICE TALKS

IT LOOKS LIKE A HUGE STRETCH OF OPEN WATER HAS RETURNED
THE MOUTH OF THE SIOUX RIVER IS STILL UNFROZEN
FROZEN PACK ICE STRETCHES BETWEEN THE ISLANDS

Monday, 9:00 AM, 18.5 degrees. Wind NW, calm. It is snowing lightly, on top of the three inches already fallen last night. The channel has a huge stretch of what appears to be open water this morning, perhaps 3 mi. X 5mi., just ESE of Bayfield, where it was frozen over yesterday evening. The ferry should have easy going today. The barometer predicts sunny weather.
Lucky and I went to the Sioux River Beach in yesterday afternoon’s snow storm and found the ice pack frozen as far as the eye could see; south toward Washburn and Ashland, east to Long Island and Madeline Island and north towards Bayfield and Basswood Island, the islands barely visible in the swirling snow and waning light.
The river is still open at its mouth, and as we walked along the snow and ice covered beach we could hear the lake “talking.” It went something like this: whisper, grumble, distant thunder; crash and bang, nearer now; but what it says, is hard to know.
As the lake ice freezes hard it creates pressure ridges, and when the pressure gets great enough the ridges push up and break, and cracks run seemingly at random in the ice. The sound effects are interesting, sometimes startling, especially if one is out on the ice. I was relieved not to see snowmobile tracks going out onto the lake. Every year people lose their machines and sometimes their lives venturing onto unsafe ice, and this is a particularly hazardous spot, between the mouths of the Sioux and the Onion Rivers, the currents of which create uncertain ice conditions far out into the bay.