Only once in my recollection during these years has the ice party been cancelled due to warm weather-a layer of slush developed between snow cover and surface ice, which made transporting the blocks impossible. Otherwise, we have consistently put up a ton or so of ice into a sawdust-lined icehouse in a barn in Blue Hill that provides its owner bragging rights throughout the entire summer cocktail season.
This winter we need not worry about the thickness of the ice or the strength and duration of the cold. It has been brutal ever since winter finally arrived (late) just before Christmas, and has progressed without a serious thaw since. The grip of cold has undoubtedly been good for ice making, which to create the perfect aesthetic conditions for display in a tumbler, requires intense cold, calm nights and minimal early snow cover. Too much wind when ice is freezing up traps air bubbles, marring the visual effect of otherwise crystal-clear cubes. Worst of all is an early January thaw with conditions the weather people euphemistically refer to as a “wintery mix” of rain, freezing rain and sleet. Wintery mixes produce aesthetically displeasing bands of dark, light and gray stripes in the ice that will never do for the proper display of an Old Fashioned or a Gibson on the rocks.
The global warming skeptic might ask why so cold a winter, during this supposedly rapidly advancing Carbon Age? Perhaps we will never know, but there are interesting theories afoot regarding the behavior of the polar jet stream, a meandering river of wind that typically flows in our hemisphere across the high plains, over the Great Lakes and down the St. Lawrence Seaway, penning cold air to the north with warmer air to the south and dragging swirling storms along in its track. Here in Maine, when the jet stream races down the St. Lawrence River Valley, we are on the warm side of a storm system and usually get rain-at least along the coast. But when the jet stream has dipped into the southern tier of states and then barrels up the Atlantic coast before turning eastward over the Gulf of Maine, we are on the cold side of the ensuing northeasterly gales and get foot upon foot of snow. You know which side of the jet stream we were on this winter.
One climate researcher at NOAA has suggested that the winter’s anomalous storms across most of the American continent resulted from the polar jet stream “jumping the Arctic Fence.” Most winters, the vortex around the Arctic generally contains cold air at the top of the world. But with a warming Arctic and the melting of sea ice, the polar jet stream weakened and meandered southward, which allowed warm air into the Arctic and sent cold air into the mid-latitudes of America and Europe. The effect is has been compared to leaving a refrigerator door open, with cold air flooding the kitchen even as warm air seeps into the refrigerator. Greenland and Baffin Island have been 15 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit. warmer this winter than normal, while the U.S. and Europe have been substantially colder. However, a few decades ago-between 1979-2001-the polar jet spent most of its time meandering much further north in the northern hemisphere, leading researchers to worry about the end of winters as we knew them.
So the moral of the story is to enjoy the winter that we have even if we do not understand it-and if you live near a pond or stream, you can throw your own party by simply chipping away at the ice and displaying it in a tumbler with your favorite elbow bend.