March 31, 1997

Ice Observations of Marquette Area Provided by Marlene

GLISTEN & GLIMMER ARe defiantly the key descriptive words of the day. traveling the rock cut, the ice is spread into thick 4-5", flat transparent blue sheets with white dividing lines running parallel to the shore about 3-4 feet between them. out past these transparent sheets about a few hundred feet or so, it looks again as the heavens dumped their crystal glassware onto the lake. and it looks like this to the horizon gazing E. along lake street to the lower harbor the ice was thinner and transparent, striated . looked like long skeletal muscles. the only water flowing here is where the ice breaker boat has passed. actually when i looked at it its thin ice, but melting even as i type. at picnic rocks and gazing to mccarty's cove the ice is as rods lined up next to each other, or blue threads that are intertwined with silver. nearer to the upper harbor power plant where the seagulls were playing in their steam bath, the ice sheets had broken, nearer to shore, into 3-4 foot pieces, transparent but with white crustments around its boarder. at the NE side of presque isle there is frozen slush with huge pieces up to a foot thick jutting out here and there as far as the eye can see to the horizon to the N. and right at the horizon line is free flowing water. the W side of the isle is impacted w/ frozen slush also, the pressure ridge here has melted down a bit, still fairly high. looking at the NW coast and little presque isle ,it tooo is encased in the white frozen slush. are these notes missing information that i could readily get? ok, bye for now marlene