Ice Grips Rivers, Recalling Past Ice Emergencies

A blanket of freezing, sub-zero temperatures and ice has descended on much of the central United States, all the way down to the Lower Mississippi River and Gulf Coast, where ice and snow conditions are less common.

Meteorologists say breakouts of cold polar vortexes to the South are becoming more common, related to disruptions in jet stream flows that hold back polar air. One result is that both heat records in summer and cold records in winter are being regularly broken.

A record-tying 10-inch snowfall in New Orleans was more than double the amount of snow that Anchorage, Alaska, has received since the beginning of December, according to the National Weather Service. The Anchorage weather service office joked in a post on X, “We’d like our snow back, or at least some King Cake in return.” Storms prompted the first-ever blizzard warnings for some places along the Texas and Louisiana coasts.

In past years, weeks of sub-zero temperatures with repeated freezing and re-freezing could lead to giant pile-ups of ice slabs known as ice gorges on the rivers. Larry Daily, former president of Alter Barge, once described the challenges of navigating ice gorges this way: “Five to 6 inches thick is not enough ice by itself to stop a tow from going through. But when a tow goes through the ice, it breaks up, then floats downstream until it catches in a river bend and refreezes. That happens over and over until we get what we call ice gorges. That ice can be 4-12 feet thick. Then you’re talking about stuff that could sink the Titanic.”

A severe ice gorge in St. Louis damaged piers and dock structures in 1904. Ice gorges could damage metal-hulled towboats, as they did during the Ohio River ice gorge of 1918. During another Ohio River ice gorge in 1936, dynamite was used in an unsuccessful attempt to break up the ice.

These icy conditions test safety procedures for towboat crews, and the piloting skills of towboat captains and pilots. Warmer temperatures were expected to return to the South by the weekend. For the rest of the river system, cold temperatures could persist for another week.

We wish all the very best and wishes of safety to all those hard-working men and women on the river.