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Skunk River, Iowa Ice breakup on 2/17/11
Transcript

I cannot believe this!
This is like very impressive!
Look at this piece coming flying in here!
Right where the line is.
Yeh, that’s just crazy!
Stay Floating, stay floating! At least it came up 5 feet.
We’ve got to get out in the middle too, I want to see this. I’m sorry!
No, you’re fine.
That is cool-ness!
Look at this monster sheet of ice that is about ready to hit the bridge!
It’s just slicing through it.
Look at that big crack right there.
Most impressive thing I’ve ever…Look at the sheet of ice that’s moving. This one’s just huge!
Good thing we didn’t put the boat out there, Doug! Did you hear that?
You should get that…
You can feel the bridge shaking don’t you? Oh, yeh.
How does that tree stay on there, you know?
This bridge is amazing!
Look at the break right there…Look at how it’s splitting..
I guess the water just doesn’t stop, does it, huh?
…holes, must have been a drift line form something…
…that line of…
So it’s pretty soft, isn’t it!
That’s what’s going to happen up there in Keosauqua.
I know…
I wonder how that tree is doing..
Yeh, you wonder why ice rips lines out here every year.
Oh, I know..
I mean, look at right now, the good thing is, look at it, Jason, over there.
How much less there is over there. It’s just kind of piling up over there right now.
I don’t know if it’s actually…(inaudible)
That entire chunk of ice is moving..
Pretty impressive, isn’t it?
That is one gigantic chunk of ice!
Which is one big piece after another.
Now here comes some jam stuff.
Look at it climbing up over the top of that tree!
Look, that one chunk went over..
“Crack”
The tree just cracked.
How does it not, ya, know?
That tree’s caught just right.
Look at all of this..
Did you get that up there Jason yet?
Are you doing a couple of movies?
I’m just playing it, I’ve been playing it ever since we came out here.
I thought it only went 10 seconds or something like that.
Over here, look at that, it looks like it thickens.
Unbelievable!
I don’t know what it looks like, but..(inaudible)
That’s pretty cool, something like that, look at that…what?
The way they built that, I mean, it’s just holding up to all of that.
Yeh, that was pretty neat..
Listen to that!
Oh, that was cool!
Look at how thick that one is, it couldn’t handle it!
No, it’s…it couldn’t handle that piece!
That one might be stopping some stuff for a little bit.
“Laughing”
Look at how thick this is coming in…this is coming in from a different stream somewhere, isn’t it?
I don’t know.
Look at that hit that thing…
Look at this big one coming.
I mean, this just goes to show you..You wonder why stuff get’s torn out…
How doesn’t it get torn out, huh?
That is…(inaudible)
Look at this big honker..
Look at the size of that guy coming in!
(inaudible)
Well, this would be good information for the Weather Service too.
Well, you wonder where it’s going to jam next, and how far back it’s going to come.
(inaudible)
Wow..this one’s so big it’s rubbing both sides of the..both piers.
And it’s thick too, look at that going under!
You can see why the pier areas slow them up enough, too, to stop them.
Right! (inaudible)
(inaudible)
Yeh, good thing we didn’t put the boat in the water.
We wouldn’t have made it very far!
That would have been the end of it!
That would have been so fast too.
You may not be..because pulling it in.
Oh, that happened in under a minute! Right towards it, yeh.

Title: Ice breakup on the Skunk River at Augusta, IA

Description:

This video captures the breakup of ice cover on the Skunk River at Augusta, Iowa, on February 17, 2011, at approximately 3:00 pm CST. The river stage at the time was 14.50 feet (elevation 535.74 feet NGVD29). A preliminary estimate of the discharge at the time of the ice breakup is 9,500 cubic feet per second.

The USGS has operated a streamgage on the Skunk River at Augusta since 1913. The streamgage is located on the left bank of the river, just upstream of the County Highway X38 bridge in Augusta, and 10.4 miles upstream from where the Skunk River flows into the Mississippi River. The Skunk River watershed, encompassing 4,355 square miles, stretches from its headwaters in central Iowa near Williams to the southeastern corner of Iowa south of Burlington. In addition to real-time stage and flow, the USGS also collects a daily record of suspended sediment concentration and routine water-quality samples at the streamgage.

Location: Augusta, IA, USA

Date Taken: 2/17/2011

Length: 10:09

Video Producer: Jason McVay , U.S. Geological Survey

Note: This video has been released into the public domain by the U.S. Geological Survey for use in its entirety. Some videos may contain pieces of copyrighted material. If you wish to use a portion of the video for any purpose, other than for resharing/reposting the video in its entirety, please contact the Video Producer/Videographer listed with this video. Please refer to the USGS Copyright section for how to credit this video.

Additional Video Credits:

Jason McVay, Biologist (camera operator)
Doug Goodrich, Supervisory Hydrologic Technician

Source:

For more information, please visit the streamgage website at: http://waterdata.usgs.gov/ia/nwis/nwisman/?site_no=05474000

File Details:

• Quicktime
• Flash Video
• W3C Timed-Text captions file
• Text transcript

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Tags: IceFlow IceJam Iowa SkunkRiver river streamgage water