Why North Dakota? Ice Circles!

I am often asked….Why North Dakota?

Heck, that’s pretty easy to answer: ND is known for…


- Teddy Roosevelt Natl Park, with the largest herd of free-roaming buffalo
- Lots of natural gas…
- Most buffalo chips for campfires
- A good percentage of indoor plumbing
- International Peace Garden
- The Badlands
- More oil than OPEC
- Lowest unemployment rate
- Lawrence Welk
- A 50 foot high pyramid of empty oil cans… said to be the tallest in the world
- Perch Capital of the World
- most rural state with 90% area in farms
- Most frozen tongues on schoolyard flagpoles
- leader in spring and durum wheat production
- Largest sheep research center in the United States
- ‘Rock Johnnies’ rocks piled by sheepherders as a way to pass the time.
- More sunflowers than any other state
- Sitting Bull’s bones (until those dastardly South Dakotans stole ‘em!)
- Lewis and Clark expedition encountered their first grizzly (brown) bears
- Statue of a really big buffalo
- Statue of a really big milk cow
- Statue of a really big Norwegian woman
- World’s 3rd largest nuclear power
- did not 'officially' become a state until 2012 (more of Sven's blundering clerical errors)


And NOW…

Crop Circles? Nope…Way, Way Better’n That!

NOW!….North Dakota has …. ICE CIRCLES!


North Dakota’s latest tourist attraction.

A retired engineer out hunting in North Dakota in November spotted a huge circle of ice spinning on the Sheyenne River, over 50 feet in diameter.

A vast circle of ice has been found slowly rotating in North Dakota's Sheyenne river. Perfectly circular ice disks form on outer bends of rivers, where faster-running currents break chunks of surface ice away during cold weather. The rotational shear of the river's current pulls chunks of ice together and spins the resultant mass around, grinding its edges into a neat circle.





Check this video out …It's the Real Thing, we kid you not! ...beats the biggest pile of oil cans in my opinion.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbUZb-aRECY



Retired engineer George Loegering captured the phenomenon on camera. Some 50-feet in diameter, the Sheyenne disk is larger than those discovered in recent years, including a ten-foot example in the UK. Allen Schlag, National Weather Service hydrologist in Bismarck, North Dakota, says that the larger the river, the bigger the ice circle likely to form on it. Of the new ice disk, Schlag said "that might be one of the better examples I've seen." Well, he's the weatherman, so he ought to know.


And I can say this about that:



"An ice circle is a natural phenomenon that occurs in slow moving water in cold climates.

Ice circles are thin and circular slabs of ice that rotate slowly in the water. They form in eddy currents. I first noticed this while ice-fishing in our windmill’s cattle trough. You’re a daisy if you’ve done the same."




Note to border friends...Please do not throw any more bombs across the ND borders at us. We are tired of lighting and throwing them back.

- The maker of this thead would like to acknowledge the help of a fellow Dakota fan/Baja neighbor/Nomad for the production of this thread via his email. Gracias, Vince.

edited for brevity



[Edited on 12-14-2013 by Pompano]

Visited my sister-in-law in Fargo, went and saw the giant Buffalo! Asked her 'so what do you do for fun around here?' Answer: 'drink!' Don't remember much else about the trip

Quote:

Originally posted by acadist Visited my sister-in-law in Fargo, went and saw the giant Buffalo! Asked her 'so what do you do for fun around here?' Answer: 'drink!' Don't remember much else about the trip

acadist,

You and your sister-in-law must driven west from Fargo about 90 miles to the city of Jamestown to see that big Buffalo statue. Big sucker, eh?

On the drinking thing, it's a very straight stretch of highway, but take it easy, pardner. It's not worth a trip in a one-way camper.

What a sight, lol, looking for fun we also went to a Twins game. Because I had tasted the local suds my wife was driving on the way back and got a ticket in nowhere, Minnesota. It was for 85, good thing I would have been doing at least 95 on that long flat road.

Lots of interesting information, thanks.
I was working for a company many years ago and they offered me a position in N. Dakota and I would have an office in Fargo. I told the company I preferred San Diego, Caliornia. I did not last long in that company

We loved the part of North Dakota we traveled through ---- NOT in the winter.

Thanks for the report! Ice circles, very interesting.

Quote:

Originally posted by DianaT We loved the part of North Dakota we traveled through ---- NOT in the winter. Thanks for the report! Ice circles, very interesting.

Love that survival list! Two other things that John always carried when he was driving cross country trucks were bleach and kitty litter to help him get across Wyoming.

Your mother was a very wise woman.

I thought the mosquitoes in Montana were bad when we visit our son, but then I met the black flies in upper state New York and Maine!

BTW-- I think I inherited the love of the prairies from my father who was raised in that other Dakota and talked about the prairie a lot.


[Edited on 12-14-2013 by DianaT]

The two worse cases of mosquitos I've ever encountered, #1 salt marsh mosquitos , #2 a flood irrigated pasture in north east OR where the owner failed to cut the irrigation water off during the winter and there was about 6"s of water during the spring thaw.