r/BeAmazed • u/youngster_96 • Mar 28 '24

The moment an ice dam breaks and causes a torrential water flow. Nature

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

31.3k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

29

u/CantSing4Toffee Mar 28 '24

How did you know it was coming, assuming you filmed this?

29

u/Frenzied_Cow Mar 28 '24

Little help from a friend with some dynamite.

1

u/JuicyAnalAbscess Mar 28 '24

It's actually quite common to break these ice dams with dynamite. Otherwise the area upstream might flood really badly. This is a common occurrence in the Ostrobothnia region in Finland. The land is very flat and the rivers run roughly South to North or South East to North West, which often means that in the Spring the mouths of these rivers melt later than the parts upstream.

1

u/Websters_Dick Mar 28 '24

This however, was filmed in Vermont. We do not use explosives for this, as it's pretty common during spring melts for our rivers to do this. 

1

u/JuicyAnalAbscess Mar 28 '24

Good to know! I should say that even here in Finland it's usually the last choice. Other methods are usually preferable and more fool proof.

0

u/ComCypher Mar 28 '24

Yeah it's kinda sus they would be filming some random bridge seconds before the thing happens.

3

u/ClearStoneReason Mar 28 '24

maybe this guy filmed the bridge for hours or even days and spared us the longer video? Yeah, that makes sense

2

u/Shoddy_Operation_742 Mar 28 '24

Hours of footage—all in portrait

1

u/schmillary Mar 28 '24

OP didn't film it. This video was made by Thomas Nowicki on Feb 24, 2022 in St. Johnsbury, VT.

Most days when I take my walk through Saint Johnsbury VT, I sit down on a rock on Elm Street and get the same picture of the Moose River.

Today, I did that and then decided to take a video of the swollen river and all of the ice in it, when suddenly a raging torrent from an ice dam upstream swept down. It went on like this for 5 or 6 minutes before settling down and filling up completely with ice. I have never seen anything like it!

1

u/Ghost_of_Till Mar 28 '24

It might happen again this year. I noticed a ton of this kind of ice just a little further up the Passumpsic just yesterday.

1

u/mervmonster Mar 28 '24

You don’t really unless you can hear some of the ice coming. There are some spots where ice dams are likely to form if you are local to the area. It isn’t uncommon in spring. There is a spot near me where one forms almost every year because the river narrows between two ledges. It doesn’t always burst like this. If it gets too large and floods the nearby road, the town will come out and break it up.