Ice on the Missouri River

Not completely covered, the Missouri River has been littered with chunks of ice making their way south to Kansas City. Tuesday was a great day to get outside because of the above freezing weather. Unlike places like Connecticut or New York, the weather here in Kansas is marked by rapid changes. After reaching 57 degrees today, following a night in the teens, the temperature has shifted again and will reach only the mid-twenties or so on Wednesday.

Some of the graduates of the MFA program at Iowa have mentioned the breaking up of the ice on the Iowa River and what a jubilant event such an occurrence was. I haven’t seen the Missouri River totally ice-covered in all of my years of living in this part of Kansas. I’m sure that the Missouri River has been frozen at some point, making it possible to walk across the river from Kansas to Missouri, but I don’t know when that event happened last.