Fast Break Up

Break up is the big spring event here in Alaska that says that winter is finally, truly, honest-to-goodness, no-turning-back, absolutely over. Some say jokingly that it is the start of summer, but we are actually quite a way from that just yet. The temperature this morning was about 36 degrees; it did get up to 55 by mid-afternoon, and with the sun shining brightly it felt really warm to sit outside if you could get out of the wind.

Break up is when the cubic miles of ice move out of all the rivers. Lots of variables play into when it will happen, and there are several lotteries around the state where the closest guess, by day, hour and minute, wins the pot. Those are specific to a certain river at a certain location, and are usually named “Ice Classic”.

The Kuskokwim Ice Classic terminated yesterday morning, sometime around 10 AM. I haven’t heard the official time yet.

Dutch and I were in Anchorage this past weekend (to buy our wedding rings, among other things) and on the flight home, it was easy to see from the plane that break up was getting close. All the sloughs and small shallow lakes were free of ice; the main river, however, was still solid. But the ice had dark spots where it was thinning and the overflow stains at the edges were large. I knew it wasn’t going to be long.

Tuesday morning the buzz was going around the hospital that break up was happening. I wasn’t able to get away for lunch, and after work had to race home to feed the dogs and then race to get to the City Council meeting by 6:30, so had no time to check the river. It was mid-morning today before I was able to get there, and holy cow! It was all over! A few chunks of ice are still floating down, but the river is pretty much all water now. It usually takes a couple of days for all the ice to move out; this was a really fast break up. And it looks like we’ll have no flooding this year at all.

I’m kinda bummed that I missed it. Break up is an amazing thing to watch. I’ve written about it before, here and here and here and here. The physicality of the event is what is so awesome. Conceptualize a serpiginous block of ice, four feet thick, a mile wide, and 800 miles long. That's a lot of ice. Really. A lot. As winter retreats and the weather warms up, that block doesn’t just melt; it would take too long. It breaks into huge pieces and floats out to sea, like a huge crowd of people surging towards a subway, everyone wanting to get on. Bumping, grinding, bobbing ice, in chunks as small as cars and as large as houses, racing for the ocean. Dead trees, dead animals, and all kind of debris riding on top. It truly is an amazing thing to see. People gather at the river's edge and sit for hours, just watching it all go by.

So break up for 2008 occurred on May 13^th. The most frequently occurring date for break up at Bethel has been May 18^th; it can occur as early as late April, and as late as early June. It can occur at 4:00 in the morning or at 2:00 in the afternoon. The Kuskokwim is a tidal river, and the tides have as much effect on when the river breaks as the sun does. A rainy spring can make a difference; we didn’t have one this year. This was a lucky year; it was a fast and easy transition.