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  • 2007-01-22 (xsd:date)
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  • Do Photographs Capture Niagara Falls Frozen? (en)
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  • Niagara Falls (actually the collective name for a set of three waterfalls along the Niagara River that forms the border between New York and Ontario: the American Falls, the Bridal Veil Falls, and the Canadian/Horseshoe Falls) is the celebrated natural phenomenon that has awed generations of honeymooners. Although it may seem astounding to contemplate, the tremendous volume of rushing water (hundreds of thousands of gallons per second) that is Niagara Falls does freeze from time to time, although very rarely completely as suggested in the text accompanying the following image -- despite the abundance of ice visible in the image, water can still be seen flowing over the falls in several distinct streams: As noted in the Washington Post, the sight of a frozen Niagara falls is not so unusual a phenomenon: During occasional periods of prolonged cold weather falling water and spray from Niagara Falls may freeze into ice formations, and ice mounds or floes may form in the Niagara River (sometimes creating ice bridges that stretch across the width of the river), but only once in recorded history has freezing weather actually stopped water from flowing over the falls. This instance occurred in March 1848 when a preponderance of ice above the falls reduced the flow of water over the falls to a trickle, as reported in the Buffalo Express newspaper: The sepia-toned photograph shown above (which dates to about 1909) corresponds to a view of the American Falls: Although the text that accompanies the sepia image in e-mail forwards and social media postings usually states that the photo dates from 1911, other sources assign a variety of different dates to it. Much of the Niagara River around the falls was frozen in 1912, an occurrence that resulted in a tragic accident when an ice bridge across the river broke free from its shoring as several people were traversing it. Three people were unable to make it back to shore in time and were killed as the loosened ice plunged down the river. In the wake of the January 2014 polar vortex that brought bitterly cold weather to much of the eastern half of the United States, a number of photographs were circulated via social media purporting to show Niagara falls in a currently frozen state: All of these images antedated the January 2014 polar vortex, however, having originated in 2007, 2012, and 2011, respectively. (The falls did ice over twice during the winter of 2014, however.) Later versions of the example e-mail that was originally forwarded in 2007 included additional (undated) photographs of the falls in winter, obviously from different years (from top left: 1906, 1902, and 1936): (en)
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