March is here and it is still cold, windy, and very much winter on PEI:
Winter in Naufrage – Prince Edward Island
In this aerial shot from Naufrage you can see the harbour is blocked with sheets of ice, while out to sea there is fast ice all the way to the horizon.
Ice season is here and that means it’s just beautiful outside:
Sea ice and red cliffs at sunset – Prince Edward Island
Current sea ice situation around Prince Edward Island
Every day I’m keeping an eye on the ice charts, and maybe soon we’ll have some sea ice in Souris too. We are always the last ones to get it on PEI but as you can see in the picture it’s well worth the wait. 🙂
Late winter is sea ice season around Prince Edward Island, I snapped this photo yesterday from North Lake, a scenic 20 minute drive from our home:
Sunset over sea ice – Prince Edward Island
This year the sea ice comes and goes with the wind, and yesterday’s northerly winds brought plenty of it to our north shore:
March 8 2020 sea ice around PEI
This satellite photo shows there’s still plenty of winter snow on the ground, but robins have arrived too so spring is already on my mind. 🙂
Yesterday morning the sunrise was brief but beautiful, lighting up the cliffs, the lighthouse, and the sea ice approaching from the north:
Warm light on a cold morning – East Point, PEI
When I arrived at East Point mere minutes before sunrise, I smiled when I saw a small yet promising gap on the horizon of an otherwise overcast sky. When the sun rose, warm sunlight poured through the opening for a fleeting moment, before disappearing behind the cloud cover for the rest of the day.
Here’s another aerial artwork from Prince Edward Island’s frozen shores:
It looks like someone took a hammer to this patch of ice, but of course the sea needs no help creating something like this. In case you were wondering about scale, this photo covers an area of about 32 by 24 meters.
Spring is here, and days are getting longer and lovelier every week. We haven’t seen the end of winter weather though, this weekend there’s more snow in the forecast, and sea ice is still present around much of the island. The other day I was out on the North Shore taking pictures of the ice at sunset:
I’ll be sad to see it go, but you can already see large ice-free gaps forming near shore, a sure sign it’s on its way out.
Sea ice is still present along much of Prince Edward Island. From a distance it looks quite uniform and flat but out there on the ice itself, there are plenty of interesting shapes to marvel at:
To me, this icy wilderness is a fascinating place to explore and I think we’re lucky to have it embrace our island every year. 🙂
I often stop when I drive by the house and barn at Priest Pond, in summer time there are beautiful flowers there, and in the run-up to spring you can usually see sea ice in the background beyond the pond. Last week instead of the usual pictures I took in an aerial view:
This is the same pond where I photographed a snoozing mink last year. 🙂
This is the Canadian Ice Service chart for the Gulf of St. Lawrence, you can see Prince Edward Island is pretty much locked in by sea ice right now. This is what that looks like from above:
Thanks to a night of freezing rain we also had a bit of ice on the land the other day:
This shot was taken after sunset on one of the backroads near Souris; because of winter conditions we can’t drive on those roads but sometimes it’s possible to park there and walk a little bit.
Right now all of the sparkle and glitter is gone again, today it’s +4°, tomorrow it’s -16°, the rollercoaster winter continues.
March continues with its cycle of thawing and refreezing, bringing muddy trails one day and solid frozen ones the next. Rubber boots are indispensable when you’re out and about on Prince Edward Island:
Muddy trail above and a frozen road below:
The highlight of March is still the sea ice, it comes and goes with the wind, this week we finally had ice in Souris and in other places it hadn’t been before:
Sea ice at Red Point Provincial Park:
And sea ice at Basin Head Provincial Park:
