A tragic fire in Gloucester

Posted on by Ian C.

When showering this morning, there was very low water pressure – not so unusual.
Then when we went in to Gloucester, there was a smell of smoke and a light haze in the sky.
By then we’d heard, an apartment building had burned down in the night, with at least one death – the building also collapsed on to a next door temple, destroying that too.

Margaret & I walked up to where the buildings were, and saw this – the skeleton of a church brings the tragedy home even more strongly:

Our thoughts are with the many people that lost their home and belongings last night.
You can read more on WHDH, or on the Boston Globe

Ice chimneys

Posted on by Ian C.

It’s been cold recently, with high temps below freezing for almost a week; it snowed overnight too so I came out to take some pictures. But the sun was already melting everything and I got only this one (and my shoe print!):


What I did find to photograph though, were these amazing ice “chimneys” on the pond:

They apparently formed because the initial ice layer over the pond covered where the bubbler goes (or maybe the bubbler moved), so the remaining hole in the ice was filled with bubbly water; the bubbles froze in the cold air, forcing more bubbles to rise up and slowly creating a tube of ice with the bubbles climbing all the way to the top (if you look at the full-size picture you can see the bubbles at the top).
I broke the chimneys off, to clear some ice from the pond; here is an inside view of the ice chimney/tube:

 

And here’s a picture of Koko, enjoying the weather (when he wasn’t eating snow!):