"Snow Monster" Survival Update; Ice Rearranges River Flow

So earlier this week I had a post about the coming thaw and whether or not my 'snow monster would survive.  It was a long, drawn out thaw, and there isn't any snow to speak of in town anymore.  Still, the snow monster was able to pull through and now exists as a sorry pile of icy snow outside my back door.



Temperatures are back around freezing, and some snow may occur tomorrow night, so the snow monster will be sticking around for now.

(more below)





Not surprisingly, the thaw caused the level of the Middlebury River to rise and moved around a lot of the ice that had formed over the last few cold spells.



In this area, ice stuck against a downed log has backed up and water is flowing down the new oxbow cut (to the right), pouring through the eroding area that will eventually break through and 'cut the oxbow' as mentioned in this previous post.



We'd speculated that this might happen, and it is part of the natural process that leads to the large bend being cut off, but right now the ground is frozen and erosion is minimal.  The shift in the river will probably have to wait until spring.

Meanwhile, I've got another project in the works, that will address past and future nature hiding in what I see as a very harsh place (for some, at least) - a suburb of Los Angeles.  More about that in the weeks to come.