Sunday, January 18, 2015

Circle to Circle


The rain started around midday, with the temperature rising all morning, starting from the teens in town, single digits in the hollows.  By the time I got to the bridge at 1:30, a large section of ice above the main channel had collapsed, with water flowing above it.  A long thin crack suggests the surface ice cleanly broke in two, then sank.

The upper end of the crack signals the point where the water hit surface ice again.  When the blue-grey flow reached that boundary, the visible stream began to move in a tight circle, seen in the photo. Floating pieces of ice moved round and round the near perfect loop, going nowhere.  Even more startling, some of the water spun back upstream to create a clockwise flow in a less well-defined circle.  The centrifugal flow from the second then rejoined the first to create a fluid figure-eight.

The blue-grey water
Made a Moebius strip above
The transfigured ice.

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