"Ray Butler" <[email protected]> wrote: >In January 1981 I was moored on "Lupin" at the bottom of Ware lock on the >Lea, and on getting up to open a window because the stove + 2 Aladdin >paraffin lamps were making it too hot in the cabin (!) I noticed that the >river was freezing as it came over the weir there. > >The flowing section was about 4 inches deep in ice during that frost.
A considerable amount (up to about 100 megalitres/day) of the flow of the Lea is usually diverted into the New River from the pound above Ware lock. So the flow over the Ware weir is often quite small (even non-existent sometimes). A small amount of water is diverted out of the New River back into the Lea below Ware lock, to keep the levels up for navigation etc.. So it is quite likely that the length you saw freezing, which is above where the NR water comes in, actually had very little flow at the time. I've seen frozen the length from Ware lock up to New Gauge (the extraction weir). >I have in my youth broken ice 3 inches thick on the canal section above >Waltham Common Lock (With someone else's boat!) During the last seriously cold winter (can't remember the year; within the last five or so I think), I'm told kids were riding motor bikes on the cuts around there. Adrian Adrian Stott 07956-299966
