Late Season Ice-Shove Event

Ice-shove is a relatively uncommon (but not rare) phenomena on big lakes like Lake Champlain (VT),  Lake Winnebago (WI) and Utah Lake (UT).  They are also  called ice-push although that generally refers to the slow, rachetting, thermal pushing of ice into shore or objects in the lake .   The ice is shoved by strong winds and/or collisions of wind blown or current driven ice sheets.   Ice shoves often result in ice piles The pile formation process is quick (on the order of 15 minutes for a big pile) so it rarely witnessed.  We had a particularly spectacular ice-shove event on April 7 when forty+ mph winds drove a large plate of well thawed ice back into Maquam Bay.    The following are a couple of pictures and a map.  More will be posted in the next few days.

The base of the pile is about 6 feet above the lake. Total height roughly 15 ft. Rain on the way

Looking north toward the back of the bay.

The ice in Maquam Bay had been pushed south over the previous week and on Saturday it was in position to be pushed back north by the strong winds coming Sunday. As it rubbed against the east side of Hog Island the ice overrode itself, forming piles.

More on this ice shove a week later