Talk:Ice jam

Moved content
Content was moved here from Ice dam, per the discussion at Talk:Ice dam. The ice dam article became a disambiguation page. See previous discussions about this page at Talk:Ice dam. HopsonRoad (talk) 14:00, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Rewrite of lede
Thanks for your interest in this article. Unfortunately, I don't concur with some recent changes that you've made. Here are some key points that I have problems with: I would recommend the following:
 * Not all ice jams are thought of as ice dams, however all ice dams are ice jams. Most researchers in the field just use "ice jam".
 * Ice jams on lakes are wind-driven and don't occur just at river mouths (it would be just coincidence if one did). Instead wind and waves can pile slabs of ice one on top of the other. These don't cause restrictions in river flow, just shoreline erosion and damage.


 * Ice jams occur on rivers when floating ice accumulates at a natural or man-made feature that impedes its progress downstream. Ice jams can significantly reduce the the flow of a river and cause upstream flooding; these jams are sometimes called ice dams. Ice jams can lead to flooding, either upstream when the flow backs up, or downstream when the jam releases, causing damage to structures on shore. Ice jams on large lakes can occur when strong winds drive ice into piles along a leeward shoreline.

Sincerely, HopsonRoad (talk) 17:10, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
 * (A) As to your first bullet point, I tweaked the article text accordingly
 * (B) As to your second bullet point, I don't agree that shoreline piles are correctly called "ice jams".  If you disagree please point to an RS discussion of an "ice jam" on a lake that doesn't involve a river.  Glossary listings don't count.   I have found two RSs talking about such piles.  (Once I scared the crap out of myself by climbing one that was 30 feet on Lake Superior to take pics of the waves below, only to discover that the waves had already eaten away the lakeside base of the thing and I was on a skinny little promontory with no hope of rescue if it broke off!)   Anyway... shoreline piles in the RSs I found are
 * This ABC news RS refers to shoreline piles without river as "ice shoves"
 * Currently used in the article the Ashton 1986 book), to the extent it is previewed in Google Books, seems to refer to that phenomena as "ice piling".
 * If you go looking for others, I suspect you might find references in oceanography and sailing/navigation/nautical type stuff.  Think of sea ice moving down from the arctic that gets jammed up in Fram Strait or some of the RSs from Great Lakes news stories involving shipping when the lake ice packs in the boats. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 18:28, 30 March 2018 (UTC)


 * NewsAndEventsGuy, thanks for your reply, here. The lake and sea-ice phenomena that you allude to are wind and often tidal-current driven. Mariners often refer to such ice as "pack ice". Ice piling is but a sub-phenomenon of pack ice. I would be comfortable with removing the reference to such ice from this article. I was surprised to see it included in the first place.


 * Consequently, I recommend the following lede over what's currently there:


 * Ice jams occur on rivers when floating ice accumulates at a natural or man-made feature that impedes its progress downstream. Ice jams can significantly reduce the the flow of a river and cause upstream flooding—sometimes called ice dams. Ice jam flooding can also occur downstream when the jam releases in an outburst flood. In either case, flooding can cause damage to structures on shore.


 * BTW, White, Daly, Lever, and Ashton are all my former colleagues, as are many other lake and sea-ice experts. I am also intimately familiar with the facility wherein the Cazanovia Creek modeling was conducted and have watched such modeling in process.


 * Sincerely, HopsonRoad (talk) 21:13, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I think we agree to delete last line; Delete "lake" related text in the body. A new minor formatting point.... convert italics on ice dam to bold, per manual of style. Please just boldy apply those changes to the article. Thanks NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 16:40, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject Dams
If the article is in the Category Dams by Type, I am adding WikiProject Dams, even if made by animals (Beavers}, avalanches, civil engineering construction, or weather (Ice). --Dthomsen8 (talk) 08:47, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

niagara falls
The wikipedia entry says

In March 1848, an ice blockage caused the falls to stop; no water (or at best a trickle) fell for as much as 40 hours. Waterwheels stopped, and mills and factories shut down for having no power.[23]

is this a case of ice-ram? if so, it is probably the most spectacular case.

pietro151.29.25.24 (talk) 06:18, 25 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you for writing, Pietro. Talk pages are used for improving the article, not for discussing their contents. However, I searched on "ice ram" and couldn't find any such technical term for inclusion in the article. Cheers, HopsonRoad (talk) 18:26, 25 November 2019 (UTC)


 * ice-ram is a misprint of ice-jam. sorry. pietro.151.29.25.24 (talk) 19:00, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

An ice congestion?
Thank you for your contribution to this article. I'm not sure whether "ice congestion" is a term of art, the way "ice jam" is. One can say "an ice jam", but it sounds awkward to say "an ice congestion". Likewise, the plural "ice jams" is natural sounding where "ice congestions" is not.

In googling "ice congestion" I find the phrase most often used in reference to sea ice, but not as a term of art. The source that you cite does not appear to use it as a term of art. Instead "ice congestion" is merely an accumulation of ice that can impede navigation and still be flowing downstream with the current. The article mentions "ice jam" much more frequently as something that can impede flow, cause flooding, as well as impede shipping. It's a more severe type of ice congestion that is nearly stationary with respect to the river flow.

I have changed the lead to read:

"Ice jams occur when floating river ice accumulates at a natural or man-made feature that impedes the progress of the ice downstream with the river current."

Cheers, HopsonRoad (talk) 21:48, 1 December 2019 (UTC)


 * @User:HopsonRoad One reason why I added "ice congestion" as a "term of art": Traffic jam. Taylor 49 (talk) 05:04, 2 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your reply, Taylor 49. In idiomatic English, the same difficulties apply to "traffic congestion" as an alternative to "traffic jam", which as you point out is a term of art. We don't say "a traffic congestion". We can refer to traffic congestion, but it describes a situation without being a term of art. Cheers, HopsonRoad (talk) 14:14, 2 December 2019 (UTC)


 * @User:HopsonRoad IMHO "trafic congestion" and "ice congestion" are more logical terms than slangy "traffic jam" and "ice jam". But some/all people seem to prefer ambiguous terms and slang ... Taylor 49 (talk) 14:30, 2 December 2019 (UTC)


 * , it's not for us to decide, based on our personal preferences. We must be guided by what we find in reliable sources. BTW, neither term is "slangy". "Jam" is an alternative to blockage, congestion. Cheers, HopsonRoad (talk) 15:28, 2 December 2019 (UTC)