Nebraska’s Central Platte River always becomes a focus of attention about this time of year as migratory ducks and geese descend upon the river by the thousands and millions, followed shortly after by a half million sandhill cranes.  This year, the river grabbed our attention a little early when ice jams shunted flowing water across several thousand acres of nearby land, including some of our prairie.  I’ll provide some more descriptions and photos of that event next week, but for today, here are two images I took yesterday as I walked around an ice field sitting on top of that prairie.

(And don’t worry, the flood shouldn’t cause any major damage to the prairies, though we’ll be watching closely for a potential influx of invasive plants brought in by the water and rebuilding a few fences.)

A crust of ice across the top of a prairie slough cracked apart as the water receded beneath it.  The Nature Conservancy’s Platte River Prairies, Nebraska.

A prairie slough, normally a groundwater-fed wetland, flowed with river water for a week or so during the flood.

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