These pictures are purely documentary in nature. I want my archive to contain evidence of an anomaly in the form of warming and the almost beginning of the ice break on the Vologda River in February. If anything, this natural phenomenon called "river opening" occurs in early April.
Of course, I don't attach much importance to the Vologda ice drift.
I grew up on the Sukhona and the Northern Dvina, where an ice drift in early February and any anomalous phenomena on the local rivers always turn into a disaster for the residents.
I remember the sudden openings of the Velikiy Ustyug rivers in January and even December, which always led to large-scale floods.
But these are rivers three times wider than Vologda!
What harm can such an insignificant river as Vologda do by my standards?
Yes, I haven't lived here that long, but even in my short lifetime there was a flood.
The city itself was not flooded, but the district towns and villages were in the water.
It was November 2019, just before the abnormally warm and snowless winter of 2020.
This year, the warmth came later, after the establishment of a solid ice cover on the river.
And this warmth won out: the river finally began to open up from ice.
But I'll explain. The process of opening rivers from ice is different everywhere. It all depends on the nature of the river.
Vologda has a calm and lazy character. The ice drift here can last several days.
And there will be no spectacle here...a couple of ice floes broke off from the general canvas, floated a couple of dozen meters, stood up...then in another place like this.
This is not Sukhona, where half a meter of ice floes can destroy a house or chop up the shore.
...And fishermen, of course, are still crazy. I once walked along the river an hour before the ice break, but it was Sukhona again.
Now I'm not even close to either one.