Meanwhile on the ice front ...

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a story about how ice is affecting river traffic on the upper part of the Ohio.

The Maysville Ledger Independent has a piece on how ice is affecting the ferry at Augusta, Ky.

And WLWT in Cincinnati tells about what's going on there with the ice.

A few more river ice pictures

When your assistant stays home and you absolutely have to get the picture, all you can do is keep your eye on the road -- or in this case, the bridge -- lower the window, hold the camera where you think you should point it and snap away. If you're lucky, you get one or two usable images. That's what I did this morning crossing the East End bridge here at Huntington, WV, to get an image of the ice on the river. I didn't get all of what I wanted, but you can see a marina on the West Virginia side of the river and you can see some of the ice on the river's surface farther out.

Last year's ice was thicker than this year's judging from what I saw along the shore. Another difference is that the river was a foot or two higher when it froze last year, so when it went down, it left big slabs of ice on the shore. This time the river was at or near normal pool, and I had to shoot these slabs from afar.

And in this view from beautiful downtown Huntington, here is the Mary Ellen Jones heading up the icy Ohio.

I don't know about you, but I'm ready for the thaw we've been promised for this weekend before the next chill sets in on Monday.

Two boats on an icy river

I saw something interesting when I went down to the river with my camera today. There was ice in the channel, and I saw the Ohio Valley and the Nashville both upbound pushing empties. First, I've never seen the two boats heading in the same direction back-to-back before, and when they have gone upstream, they've usually pushed loads. On top of that, when they went under Huntington's East End bridge, they used the channel on the Ohio side, not the main channel in the middle of the river.

Here's the Nashville, formerly the Valvoline, bringing up the rear.

And here's the Ohio Valley about to go under the bridge. The sun was in the wrong spot to get a good image of the boat without a lot of work.

The rest of these are what I got as I drove and chased the boats up the road. First, the two boats as seen fro the bridge. That's the Nashville in the center of the picture, with the Ohio Valley up ahead. It looks like the Nashville is following the path the Ohio Valley cut through the ice.

And here are three of the Ohio Valley, taken as I stopped my car on the highway to get some snaps before traffic came up behind me.

There was no place to park my car other than in someone's driveway, so these were what I could get, traffic and vegetation permitting.

Later, other river ice pictures from today.

Winter pics

I went down to the river this morning to get some ice pictures, and I saw a couple of sights, namely sea gulls resting on ice and two Marathon boats heading up the river with empties, which I assume means they are going to a dock to pick up some crude from the Utica shale in Ohio.

Pictures later. I have to earn some money first. Funny how that always gets in the way.

Wheeling suspension bridge closed

The Wheeling suspension bridge is closed for an undetermined amount of time because a cable snapped this morning.