What is Digg?127 Comments
- Braxo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+100The summary of the photo is inaccurate. The falls were able to freeze because the Niagara power company actually has the ability to pull all the water from the river (as much or as little as they want) into their power generators. So back in 1911, they simply slowed the flow of water over the falls until it froze.
This is still able to happen if the power company wishes, global warming does not effect this.
I actually live in Buffalo, (15 minutes from the falls) and at night, especially in the winter, they redirect much of the water from going over the falls at night. So when you go at night, the falls look a bit wimpy as water trickles over the edge. - Flipsen, on 10/12/2007, -1/+64http://duggmirror.com/offbeat_news/AMAZING_Photo_from_1911_of_Niagara_Falls_FROZEN_OVER/
http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/1446/niagarajz8.jpg
Sorry for duplicate, but this way it's closer to the top and more convenient. - IHaveIssues, on 10/12/2007, -8/+67We will never forget 1911.
- tizz66, on 10/12/2007, -4/+59Just put a blackberry bush at the bottom...
- mocheeze, on 10/12/2007, -0/+36I'd guess it's partly because of the two hydroelectric plants which draw water into their reservoirs prior to the Falls. Would be hard to grab water from a frozen river to power a city that needs to keep warm.
- Samsong, on 10/12/2007, -8/+42You guys do realize that they turn off Niagara Falls every night, right?
- Zunger, on 10/12/2007, -2/+36Heres a slightly better picture: http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=print_topic;f=60;t=001454
edit: and the whole climate changing thing...it wont happen again because of measures they've done to stop it from freezing again. - vdubski, on 10/12/2007, -2/+33I live in Buffalo, very near Niagara Falls and had these pics forwarded to me from a friend. They are all dated 1936, so maybe the falls froze over twice?
http://vdubski.googlepages.com/niagarafalls101.jpg
http://vdubski.googlepages.com/niagarafalls202.jpg
http://vdubski.googlepages.com/niagarafalls1936.jpg - Harlemite, on 10/12/2007, -4/+33And here's another photo from 1934:
http://www.nfpl.library.on.ca/nfplindex/show.asp?id=96629&b=1
The Global Warming claim is losing weight the more we Digg (pun absolutely intended). - dziban303, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19From the comments:
"You will never see that again because of the 'ice boom', thats what keeps the river & the falls from clogging up with ice. It's required to keep the intakes for the hydro plant sufficient.
Before the 'ice boom' when the river froze, ice would clog the flow in turn reducing the amount of water that goes over the falls which would allow it to freeze." - jsdratm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19"There's no chance of that happening again with our climate changing. We don't even have snow and it's almost Christmas!"
Not true. An ice boom was installed to prevent chunks of ice from reaching the falls. It won't have a chance of freezing over again because of that, not global warming. - NSMike, on 10/12/2007, -2/+21Don't digg down jeffness, he's absolutely right. At one point, the horseshoe falls didn't have such even spillage. In the '50s, they reduced the flow to a trickle to build coffer dams in order to make sure the water distributed more evenly over the falls. In the winter, during the off-season for tourism, you're only seeing 25% of the water that would naturally be falling over the falls. That's actually part of a TREATY between the US and Canada. The erosion has been reduced significantly, otherwise the falls would be much further back, and then all of the tourism would have to be moved.
During that period of time in the '50s when it was being "beautified" (as though nature hadn't quite done its job) they considered removing all of the rocks from the base of the American falls. It was discovered that, had they done that, the American falls would've eroded much more dramatically, because the rock beneath the top of the American falls was softer. The rock underneath would have eroded away, causing the top to collapse.
And the freezing is prevented by engineering, not climate change. In the past, people used to walk across what they called an "ice bridge" to explore the gorge. That was effectively banned after the ice bridges collapsed several times and many people were killed. - runforcover, on 10/12/2007, -10/+28or... ride a barrel over the edge!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18If Niagara Falls isn't allowed to freeze anymore then the terrorists have won.
- BigSlacker, on 10/12/2007, -10/+27Dug down from ignorant climate change comments. Please...if you want to comment...learn something about the subject.
- jeffness, on 10/12/2007, -4/+19Also for tourism. It's a little known fact that Niagra falls is almost completely engineered to be attractive to tourists. It was one of the earliest destinations when the tourism industry began.
Niagra falls is nothing like it was naturally anymore. - ePlus, on 10/12/2007, -4/+18Sky/Ice skate then parachute from the top!
- komrade1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14"May I ask why they want to stop it from freezing again?"
because it generates "12 billion kilowatt hours, or enough power to supply over one million homes year round." (taken from the website of the company who runs the hydro station at niagara falls.) - brian1001001, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13Yep... the crashing water is too loud for local noise laws.
- tizz66, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13I don't want to see the pictures you have hiding in your closet...
- GruntboyX, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11"We don't even have snow and it's almost Christmas!"
Tell that to the people of Denver they have had blizzard conditions for the past 24-36 hours. - charlief, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Awesome photo! It's a shame that there isn't a higher quality copy/version of this photo. I'm glad either way it was captured the way it was. :)
- troub, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8From Zunger's link above:
"I've worked for the Parks throughout my teens. . .And no, we don't shut them down every night (you'd be surprised how often we're asked that) " - AMSRay, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Agreed. Greenland had a temperate client 900 years ago. I think we've got a lot of warming to do before we're back to that climate.
- FrederikNS, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9Razor 1911, we will never forget
If you don't know wikipedia can be a help - portwojc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6"We don't even have snow and it's almost Christmas!"
It's also not even winter ~yet~. Just one day to go though. Also Colorado would disagree... - Pattyo13, on 05/14/2009, -1/+6did they have photoshop in 1911
- Rodzirra, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Eeeek! Global cooling! Quick, everyone burn something!
- yomomo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Global Warming causes anything they want it to, as long as it has already happened.
- proudcanadian, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I have about 3 feet in my front yard, its been there for a while now...
- mesoed, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Or the people of Buffalo a short drive away. They had 2 feet of snow back in October. Single events or lack of in a certain area do not mean global warming is happening. It called "global" warming for a reason.
- mecole21, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6"We don't even have snow and it's almost Christmas!"... But you did have snow at Columbus Day...
- ArizonaRose, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Actually, this picture was taken in 1848 -
http://www.niagarafallslive.com/Facts_about_Niagara_Falls.htm
The flow of water was stopped completely over both falls on March 29th 1848 due to an ice jam in the upper river for several hours. This is the only known time to have occurred. The Falls did not actually freeze over, but the flow was stopped to the point where people actually walked out and recovered artifacts from the riverbed! - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I think the server's frozen over. Already :(
- HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It's been 34F at night a couple days in a row here in Northern California. Some places up here are getting below freezing.
This is at least 10 degrees below normal, and it's been this way for over a week.
No warming here, not recently. - markormesher, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3nice pics vdubski! but of course it froze over several times, seeing as it's only recently had things put in place to stop it freezing over. but i do like the pictures.
- blaidddrwg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Niagara Falls? Slowly I turned, step by step, inch by inch...
- EmmSee, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6It would happen again if they didn't install an ice boom, nice try pushing your agenda at us!
- ptaylor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@ Braxo
I heard the same thing. I visited there this summer and the falls are great (unfortunately, we couldn't get to the Canada side). I remember that I saw a piece on how the current falls were at Lake Ontario at one time and just ate away at the rock over time. During the day, the falls are at 50% of their true power and at night are something like 25%. As great a sight as they are, I feel like I got jipped. I want to see them at at least 80% and then get in the Maid of the Mist.
I wonder if the falls will ever reach Buffalo... - usbserial, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4That is AMAZING!!!
Okay, from now on I'm never going to dig anything with the words "AMAZING!!, BEST ____ EVER, INCREDIBLE!!" in its title. What is wrong with the title "Photo from 1911 of Niagara Falls Frozen Over"? Nothing. It's a good title.
If anything there should be a filter on digg which automatically remove makes things correctly capitalized (FROZEN OVER) and removes those stupid, overused, useless words. - CalipsoII, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@usbserial
While I agree that AMAZING, and the ever-popular, BEST PICTURE YOU'VE EVER SEEN titles are hideously overused, they're also a near sure-fire way to get your article front-paged. I don't remember the exact story, but a while back a single article was submitted with something like 6 different titles, and the only one that made it frontpage was the "ZOMG AMAZING BEST EVER PICTURE" one.
(this was a good article though, so while I don't approve of the 'amazing' usage, I digg++ the story) - ryanbrill, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6"There's no chance of that happening again with our climate changing. We don't even have snow and it's almost Christmas!"
Nice picture, dumb description. Just post the link and quit pushing your global warming agenda... - APac, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3We don't even have snow and it's almost Christmas!?
"More than 30 inches of snow fell in the mountains and up to 2 feet fell in the Denver metro area Wednesday and early Thursday."
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20061221/D8M59G100.html - yomomo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3predictive models... Like I said, global warming folks can predict the past perfectly. but if these predictive models are so correct, how come they are so wrong when predicting the future, like, say, the 2006 Hurricane Season. Science is repeatable, and your science is not, which makes it junk.
- TKDWILSON, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2""""We don't even have snow and it's almost Christmas! More…"""""
So, your saying one warm year means it will NEVER get that cold again? Is is like 60 here in Missouri right now, and we just recently had the coldest day since 1910. Sure doesn't look like that now. The weather is fluctuating not just warming. It is natural.
Eric Wilson - r50880, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This is the REAL reason Niagra won't freeze over again:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/56631 - toxicredm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Tell that to Colorado.
- carcrazy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2How does the fact that its never going to happen again (which is debatable, I've gathered) justify burying the article for inaccuracy? This article is not suggesting that it will happen or has happened recently, its saying it really did happen in 1911!
You're no fun. - PhilH, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Very nice pictures vdubski. They look almost surreal!
- unusualbob, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2ya man, dont't you know they didnt have photoshop back then.
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