Our daily walks often take a group of friends and their dogs on a loop around the lagoon in the Boston Public Garden. Over the past couple of weeks with the freeze/thaw cycles, we've all noticed a growing number of ice fragments scattered across the lagoon and wondered about their origin.
As the ice sparkled in the sun, another garden visitor speculated it might be a beautiful art installation. He had a point. It was stunning in this light.
There were areas of the lagoon that had a lot of these ice fragments and other sections that were free of them.
This area near the wall seemed to have some new fragments being pushed out from the ice sheet.
Theories were discussed each time we circled the pond. Was someone tossing these chunks onto the ice? We all agreed there were far too many for that explanation. Spray from duck and geese landings? Aliens?
We came home and set to researching this phenomenon. In the process, we found the site Lake Ice and learned more about ice on lakes and ponds than we could have ever imagined.
Our ice mystery might be brash ice. The ice glossary at Lake Ice describes this as, "… loose small pieces of ice floating in water or the same in refrozen form. The term is normally used with arctic ice but it applies to lake ice. It is common to see isolated pieces of thicker ice in a new, ice sheet. Usually these pieces are reasonably close to an ice edge."
Any ideas? Let us know.
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Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photography: © 2017 Penny & Ed Cherubino