I didn’t get any sleep last night, and if you live around here, I suspect you didn’t either. Somewhere around 9 pm, the wind became impossible to ignore. By all accounts, we were experiencing 30-40 mph sustained winds and 50-60 mph wind gusts. And it seemed to strengthen all night, reaching a crescendo pitch between 3-5 am. I do not recommend the experience of lying in bed at night, staring up into the darkness, and waiting for that next rush of the wind train. The wind really did sound like a train coming towards us, something I had never fully grasped before. Our house is set in the woods, and even before each 50-60 mph wind gust shook our home right down to the foundation, I could hear each of the gusts approaching in a rush through the trees, increasing in pitch as it got closer, signaling its arrival with a roar of sound. This constant change in wind pitch meant a certain sustained level of anxiety on my part, as I wondered whether the next surge of sound would bring a tree through the roof. Happily, although air was whistling through our storm windows, rattling the eaves, and tossing around the lawn furniture that had been tied down, the trees around us stayed planted and the electricity stayed on. What helped, of course, is that yesterday’s 50 degree weather had completely melted the snow pack, and barren of leaves and snow/ice, the trees had a better chance of staying upright. Not all the trees stayed upright, mind you, something I immediately realized when I finally went outside.
 |
| Ice Floes on Puffer's Pond, 1/31/2013 |
Despite our crazy night in wind town, it wasn’t until I visited Puffer’s Pond today that I grasped the full power of nature’s overnight blast. Over the past month, I’ve witnessed more than a few strange sights at Puffer’s, but what I gazed out at today was truly surreal. Puffer’s Pond has been a frozen wonderland over the past week of near-zero temperatures, and I was curious to see how much of that smooth ice surface might have melted just in the last two days of 40-50 degree temperatures. From a distance and at first glance, the scene seemed very peculiar - it appeared as though something had carved out huge, rectangular bales of ice and set them down in various areas around the pond, particularly on the northern side. As I got closer, I realized I was looking at huge, broken slabs of surface ice - between 6-18 inches thick and anywhere from a few feet to 15 feet in length and breadth - that had been pushed by the heavily flowing current and high winds into haphazardly arranged piles. From my vantage point, I couldn't see the dam on the eastern side of the Pond, but if similar chunks of ice have piled up there, we will have a genuine ice jam to contend with.
Only the perfect confluence of natural events – rapidly rising temperatures, fast current fed by sudden snow melt, and high winds – could have moved these massive blocks of ice. The pond went from frozen solid to this mess of ice in less than two days. At this moment, the surface of Puffer’s looks for all the world like a smaller version of the giant ice floes one sees in pictures of the arctic. If you want to see this for yourself, don’t waste any time – tomorrow the temperatures take a nosedive (they are already falling), and everything will return to its frozen state. Of course, assuming these ice floes don’t melt completely – and that seems unlikely at this point – the refreeze should prove very interesting. Forget fashion shoots – Puffer’s could turn out to be the perfect location for anyone wanting to capture Superman’s Fortress of Solitude right here in Amherst.
No comments:
Post a Comment