Frozen river

Baby calf #4 survived the night.  Since I had the calf in a shelter the low temperature last night was 30 degrees and not the 19 degrees predicted.  Of course, not as cold since I had the calf in a shelter.

No new calves born today.

The temperature the past few days have been near normal.  Over the weekend the coldest temperature was 10 degrees.  Still it seemed like it was colder.  Over the weekend we had a half inch of snow and it took a number of days for this to melt.   During the weekend the well to my house froze two mornings.  First time because the light bulb in the pump's shed went off overnight.  The second night the water froze again even though the light bulb stayed on.  It was 34 degrees in the pump shed but apparently the ground floor of the pump shed froze.  Strange as that never happened.

The water pipe for the livestock's water trough froze.  The pipe is a frost freeze hydrant and I've had this for many years and it never freezes.  I tried using a heating torch to unthaw it but that wasn't working.  It took several days to unthaw and that was only once the temperature was in the mid to upper 40s.  Strange.  For those several days I had to use four garden hoses to go from the house's well over to the cattle's water trough.  After each time filling the water trough I had to drain all the water out of the hoses so the water didn't freeze in the hoses.

And lastly... the river completely froze over this weekend.  There was no ice at all on the river before this past weekend.  Most years the river doesn't at all freeze over.  It usually takes several days of temperatures of all least 10 below zero and  high temperatures of only the single digits.  We don't get weather like that often.  But this weekend the river completely froze over even though the lowest temperature was only 10 degrees above zero.  And it took days to thaw.  Finally tonight I saw the ice no longer went shore to shore.  The ice was only on each side of the river.  Again, strange.    And when I went for a bicycle ride this afternoon I rode by a very large pond and that was still completely frozen.

And this is March!!!   Global warming.  The earth is supposedly getting warmer but the temperatures are getting colder.  And a minor cold temperature acts as if it is a major cold temperature.  Strange.

Unbelievably iced over!