Ice Bloom

The spectacle that I call the Ice Bloom occurs here in my home town of Edmonton, every year, in mid to late November.  Some years it only lasts for a day or two, while other years it will last for as long as two to three weeks.  With all the mild weather we had this year, it was a little late getting started, but it is in full swing now.  This is the time of year that ice begins to form on the river.  It starts out as little chunks of ice, drifting down the river with the current.  As the night time temperatures drop and the water temperature gets lower, these chunks of ice become enlarged.  They get a rim of bright white ice and are usually darker, and wetter in the center.  Some people call them "ice lily pads".  They drift along accumulating and getting larger.  Eventually the river becomes full of them.  Once the river is full, they jam up and stop flowing with the current.  Then the river becomes fully iced over and the spectacle comes to an end.  I know this happens on numerous rivers here in the northern plains and into the boreal forest.  I'm not sure how far to the south this takes place.

I noticed the ice starting to form on the river about a week ago when I was going to a hockey game in the evening.  I drove down near the river after picking my daughter Anna up from her riding lesson on Friday night and noticed that the river had become quite full of ice.  With the forecast calling for really cold temperatures during the upcoming week, I knew that this weekend would be the opportunity to get out and photograph it.  I missed out on the peak conditions the last couple of years and wanted to seriously try to photograph it again this year.   On Saturday the temperature got up to just above freezing, and the skies were clear and blue.  I headed down to the pedestrian bridge over the river, near Fort Edmonton park.  My friend Tanja ventured along with me.  Margarit wasn't able to join us as she had some other stuff going on.  We spent a couple hours down on the bridge photographing the ice.  It moves deceptively quickly with the current and you need to use either a fast shutter speed to capture it... or a long one to deliberately blur it.  I tried both, and exposed about a dozen sheets of film with my view camera.  I will post some of the better ones when I get around to processing that film in the coming weeks.  In the mean time, here are a couple of quick snap shots taken with my phone.