Ice Crystals

Late last week I accompanied by daughter to the last day of the American Astronomical Society conference held at the Gaylord National Resort & Conference Center just outside of Washington DC on the shore of the Potomac River. She had a couple of hours of sessions to attend and I enjoyed the sights of the resort. There will be several posts over the next week or so from that experience.

It was a very cold day so we were bundled up when we arrived and I headed back outdoors as soon as we agreed on the place we would meet each other when her sessions concluded. I walked out to the pier jutting out into the Potomac from the resort property. In warmer weather, there is a boat that carries tourists across the river to Mount Vernon and Alexandria. It would be a great excursion with a family in warmer weather. But on this day in January, there were plates of ice in the water where the boat would have docked. I didn’t see any boats out on the river.

But the pier was still quite scenic for its vantage point for ice crystals at the edges of the ice plates and also to hear the ice moaning as the bright sunlight started the slow process of thawing the accumulation of ice of the past week when the temperature was well below freezing.