Ice Dam on the Rocky River.

Before I get to my story here's the Cleveland.com story on this:  Rocky River Ice Dam 

So.  This morning after the preschool drop off I wanted to take the new car (more on that later) for a little spin.  Stretch her legs a bit.  See what she was capable of.  So instead of my normal route home I drove through the Metroparks.  And happened upon this:

What the what?

The Rocky River was completely blocked with ice this morning:

Basically what happened was that over this crazy cold we've had the whole thing froze.  And then over the last couple days of "warm" weather it has melted enough to break up the ice.  Those big chunks moved downstream and formed this big blockage:

The whole area by the marina in Lakewood - our ROCKS WATER place - was closed off because of concerns with flooding.

It was pretty amazing to see.

I immediately called my dad b/c I knew he'd want to take pictures of it.  If he braved the polar vortex to get pictures of the lake he'd have no problem risking a flood.  Here's some of his shots:

We ended up driving through the park between the dog park in Lakewood and Hogsback Lane.  I've never seen the river moving that quickly.  Or with big chunks of ice and debris floating in it:

The dude thought it was pretty neat:

As soon as he saw his sister he was all "WE WENT TO SEE THE ICE!  IT WAS REALLY REALLY COOL!  ICE!"  So of course we had to make a second lap so she could see it:

That bench is usually right at the edge of the river.

We didn't drive all the way back down to the ice dam, though, since by then the Metroparks officials were telling people to stay away.  But they posted a couple of amazing videos of the ice jam on the Cleveland Metroparks Facebook Page.

Such an interesting event.  And honestly I'm pretty excited to be thinking about things thawing out in any form.  This has been a long and ridiculous winter.  Hopefully this is the first sign of spring!