What are Ice Drifts?

Written by: Brian Neudorff

The StormWatch 8 Weather department received some interesting and fascinating email Thursday from a viewer named Julie. Here is what the email said:

"...these are photos at Pillar Point along the eastern lake side of Lake Ontario... the wind was so strong on Wednesday it piled ice in the yards of residences there.... photos are also posted on Newzjunky.com.. Incredible photos... thank you julie"

We also showed this on our "Hot Off the Web" segment during News 8 Now at Sunrise. I have to agree with Julie these are great photos, so what happened? As you know we had strong gusty winds on Wednesday, wind gusts in Rochester, NY reached a peak of 54 mph. The average sustained wind for Wednesday was 22 mph and the strongest sustained wind we saw was 44 mph. In Watertown, close to Pillar Point, the top wind gust was 51 mph, average wind speed was 20 mph with a top wind speed of 37 mph. That wind pushed and literally blew these chunks of ice on shore and on to these residences property.

This also happened on Lake Michigan this week, here is a video from the BBC I found on YouTube. Ice drifts hit Michigan homes

Here is some from the BBC story:

High winds in Michigan, USA have created ice drifts, damaging lake-side properties.

Authorities evacuated about 30 homes on Sunday along Linwood, Brissette and Killarney beaches.

These pictures show the impact of the ice drift on beach properties in Linwood.