Freezing the river in process

The onset of winter in Veliky Ustyug is reflected not only in snow-covered trees, ice on the roads and sidewalks, but also in freezing-over the ice on the Sukhona River.
The main sign of the onset of winter is freezing ice on the river. The arrival of spring is associated with an ice drift. So in Ustyug it was accepted from time immemorial - everything is tied to the river.

Various aspects can influence on the freezing: air temperature, water level, ice thickness, snowfall. Whether there will be ice hummocks (as in 2015) or the river will freeze on flat ice (as in 2014) is unknown and it remains only to wait and observe.

Freezing ice does not look like an ice drift - ice floes are small and more like porridge. It's not for nothing that this process is called shush formation.

Freezing ice lasts longer than ice drift, sometimes it takes several weeks. Ice drift can also go for a couple of days, with a favorable combination of circumstances. But as in the case of an ice drift, with ice, too, there may be congestion effects, which are accompanied by an increase in the water level and the threat of flooding the city.

The river freezes along the edges towards the center. At the end of freeze-up, ice moves only in the middle in the place of the fairway, with a strip about 10-15 meters wide (I'll show this a little later). But in the spring the whole river is opened.

I will continue to observe the process of freezing of the river, and tell you about the results.