Dynamics of river ice jams

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River ice jam floods present significant threats to human life and property, because of the speed with which they can occur. We have measured water level rises approaching 1m per minute in our field studies during ice jam release events, and the flood levels associated with ice jam formation events frequently exceed summer flood levels in many communities across Canada. The fact that ice jams cause such dramatic water level rises, along with the congestion of river channels with massive amounts of ice, make them difficult to predict and extremely challenging to measure. However, after more than a decade of focused research, my students and I have succeeded in developing techniques for predicting and measuring ice jam formation and release events, both in the lab and in the field. This knowledge has formed the basis of our numerical models of ice jam floods, and has provided valuable validation data for our own, and others', models as well.