The Ice is Moving...Watch out!!
 

With the heavy winds last night and today, the ice is on the move. Keep an eye on your docks and small animals :eek: I have a crank up dock, but still had to use sledge hammer and pick axe today to break it up around my hinge pad. Here is a shot of the glacier smashed up on my shoreline:

Wind blown ice
 

Impressive picture. Thanks for posting.

What direction do you face?

Right in the line of fire...!!
 

...face pretty much due west. Right in the bullseye of the prevailing wind! :eek:

The shear force is impressive...amazing, really...thanks for the pics;)

Bad iceburgs
 

I have two crank up docks at the house and one 12 X 30 wood dock. Every year something happens to the wood dock. In some years the breaker for the circulator has tripped and resulted in a freeze over and ice damage.

My circulator ran successfully all winter this year and there was a nice 50 foot semi-circle in front of the dock. I thought I would finally get through a winter without ice damage and since the circulator wasn't doing anything anymore I shut it off on Monday.

Yesterday an iceburg (Estimated weight 756,234,579 tons) blew in and broke off two of the 4X6 PT legs, bent three more and now the dock is about 3 feet out of level and slightly out of it's normal place.

Oh well, mother nature beat me again and left another job for the farm jack!

Ice Floe Damage
 

Circulators do not prevent damage from ice floes. Each year, we hope that the wind is blowing from the north at our location on East Bear Island and towards our breakwater. If the wind is strong, and from the southeast, we frequently sustain damage at our dock.

That is correct, the only thing the circulators etc. do is prevent the ice from forming... In the spring as the ice pack breaks up, mother nature can do what ever she wants, and there is a tremendous amount of force that an iceberg can build up.

When I lived in Vermont on the Champlain Islands, we had a day where the causeway road was almost closed, because the wind shift, and moved pieces of ice up and onto the road....