The Cochrane Ice Jam sounds like some cool winter music festival. Alas, not a leather-clad lead guitarist in sight.
The Bow River runs through Cochrane in Alberta and is a fast-flowing waterway which carves it's way through the heart of our town and then snakes eastwards through Calgary city centre before continuing further east, eventually becoming the South Saskatchewan River.
I have featured the river many times in previous posts and photos (some of which I shamelessly reproduce here for your viewing pleasure) - it is a wide and sparkling blue ribbon, and in the summer there are easy pathways and lush, grassy borders scattered with wild flowers, butterflies and little yellow birds that never sit still long enough for me to look them up in a book.
And in the autumn, the oranges and golds make it a colourful place to hang out. The water is too cold and fast for swimming, unless you are a bouncy and senseless canine with no temperature gauge - but it's a good place for the humans to paddle near the edges.
Come wintertime, the water usually looks like one of those iced slushy drinks, and the edges become blurred with frozen shelves of ice.
But this year it all looks a little different. And it is causing some concern. I have only been here for four winters, but I have not seen anything like this.
Due to the continuing chilly weather (not sure if I happened to mention that before?!), it has all become a tad frozen. Great chunks of iced water have solidified, over-lapping each other like angry tectonic plates in a frozen wonderland - and the accumulated mini ice-bergs have recently raised the surface height of the river.
The "river" is now level with footpaths, some of which have been closed off.
It does look quite impressive, if a little worrying for those who live nearby.
And if the levels rise much further, the pipelines along that bridge will have to be shut off.
We could be heading for an "iceberg dead ahead" Titanic-stylee disaster!
