Icebergs in Massarctica
Spring is on the way! You can feel it in the air... It was above freezing almost all last week and temperatures were close to 50° most days! While the Northeast continues to thaw, I came across work by Cape Cod artist Dapixara in a CBS Boston article about giant icebergs washing ashore on Cape Cod.
The icebergs resulted from the monstrous amounts of snowfall and below freezing temperatures Massachusetts experienced the past few months. As Cape Cod Bay began to thaw, huge chunks of ice were washing ashore on the opposite side of the bay along the Cape Cod National Seashore. Dapixara's images, while it's unclear when they were taken, show overhead sized icebergs the size of small cars. I had no time to loose! It was already the second day of 50° weather and if I had any chance of capturing this possibly once in a lifetime event I had to act fast. So I drove the 2 hours and change up the Cape to Wellfleet to find some icebergs!
When I arrived, they were really more of slush-bergs than icebergs. Many were knee to waist high, and a couple were shoulder height, so not quite the size of a small car but still rather enormous! I channelled my inner James Balog (known for his breathtaking work photographing melting glaciers with the Earth Vision Institute Extreme Ice Survey) and snapped away for almost two hours. The clouds started rolling in, the sun went away, and I called it a day since I had a long drive ahead of me.
This Arctic-like scene out on the Cape offered a different landscape for photographing, with bergs presenting all sorts of interesting shapes and textures. But as the climate continues to become more extreme, this may not be a once in a lifetime occurrence. Winters like this and icebergs in Cape Cod Bay may become more occasional or even regular. We'll just have to wait and see. But in the meantime, I'm happy to catch this last glimpse of wintery days as we leave the snow and ice behind us and welcome spring!
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