Winter flooding

February 27

Morning. — Rain over; water in great part run off; wind rising; river risen and meadows flooded.

The rain-water and melted snow have run swiftly over the frozen ground into the river, and raised it with the ice on it and flooded the meadows, covering the ice there; so that you have floating ice everywhere bridging the river, and then a broad meadowy flood above ice again.

The rapidity with which water flowing over the icy ground seeks its level. All that rain would hardly have produced a puddle in midsummer, but now it produces a freshet, and will perhaps break up the river.

It looks as if Nature had a good deal of work on her hands between now and April, to break up and melt twenty-one inches of ice on the ponds, — beside melting all the snow, — and before planting-time to thaw from one to two and a half or three feet of frozen ground.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 27, 1854

Floating ice everywhere bridging the river, and then a broad meadowy flood above ice again. See  February 28, 1855 ("Our meadows present a very wild and arctic scene. Far on every side, over what is usually dry land, are scattered a stretching pack of great cakes of ice.”); January 22, 1855 ("Great cakes of ice lodged and sometimes tilted up against the causeway bridges, over which the water pours as over a dam.”)