suns along the Mohawk

 . . . 

. . Saturday afternoon: above: [R] ice built up at the river-end of the lot at 4 Washington Ave, site of the “raised Stockade house“; [L] ice floe array on east side of Riverside Park 

above: looking east from Esplanade railing; below: Park explorers with cameras; . . . 

It has been just over a week since the Mohawk River flooded onto Schenectady’s Riverside Park and the north end of four Stockade neighborhood streets along the Park. The flash-freeze of flood waters late Saturday night (Jan. 13-14) left a sheet of ice on the roadways and the Park, including freezing on and around the ice floes that had been pushed over the riverbank and into the Park by the rushing waters and jammed ice. [Click Here to see our photos from January 13 & 14.]

•  A few inches of snow that came later in the week gave a superficially normal-looking appearance to the West Lawn of Riverside Park, until you looked closer, or your foot went crashing through a thin sheet of flash-freeze ice, or you encountered the edge of a large, foot-thick, flat-top ice floe.
•  Meanwhile, along the Park’s walkway and the riverbank, ice-floes and ice chunks of all sizes and shapes were strewn and clustered, and locked into place because of the flash-freeze.

•  By last Friday (Jan. 19,2018), work crews had chopped away the ice on the pathway, from the Park entrance at Washington Avenue, past Governor’s Lane, but the clearing stopped abruptly and left a fairly tame-looking but treacherous trek over snow-covered floes and sheets of ice to reach the Esplanade and N. Ferry Street.

 By The Way: The term “flash-freeze” came into wide use earlier this month, when a giant East Coast storm brought frigid temperatures and some ocean flooding in New England. For example, Revere, Massachusetts had a flash-freeze of an ocean tidal surge about two weeks ago. See this YouTube CNN video, explaining cars frozen in place on a Revere street in a January 4 video clip posted on Twitter by @Adam28691.

 Stockade Weather Advisory: On January 18, 2018, the Schenectady police Department issued a Weather Advisory Notice for Stockade Residents, advising of “a possible weather hazard starting this weekend and continuing over the next few weeks due to the condition of the Mohawk River. The Potential of flooding exists from ice jams, change in temperature and precipitation.” The Notice says that residents should prepare themselves for flooding and be ready to evacuate.” Residents are also urged to update their contact information for the County Emergency Rapid Notification Call System, at http://www.schenectadycounty.com/rapidnotify .

 Note: click to see National Weather Service river level chart for Schenectady (Freeman’s Bridge). And, see the Mohawk River Ice Jam Monitoring system, which includes the Stockade Webcam, a camera at the Union College boathouse.

 . . rear of 1 Cucumber Alley

The Slideshow below has photos taken along Riverside Park and at the end of Cucumber Alley on Friday and Saturday, Jan. 19-20.

• . (January 19, 2018): Thanks to John Craig and NewsChannel 13 for interviewing this old ice jam watcher and photo-taker along the Mohawk.  Despite the statement in the video, we have had several ice jams along the Stockade portion of the Mohawk since 2010; that year was the most recent when ice floes jumped the banks onto the Park. Short video here

 mallards near Cucumber Alley … 

• To see a larger version of an image in the Slideshow, pause it on the image, right-click and choose Show Image in New Tab. 

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•  Thank you to the Albany Times Union for featuring one of our Mallards at the Binnekill photos in the January 24, 2018 web and newsprint [image on right] editions, in their Your Best Shot feature. I appreciate that they left my allusion to the inability of Rivers Casino to attract tourists: “When they decided to leave en masse, they did not head east toward Rivers Casino, but were seen flying south.” May they wanted to check out the Feb. 8 opening of the billion dollar Resorts World Catskills Casino at Monticello. See “New Catskills casino brings glimmer of hope” (Gazette, by Charles Bagli, originally in the New York Times, Jan. 12, 2017)