I skipped the "Maid of the Mist" boat, but got my soak at Cave of the Winds. On the elevator up from Cave the attendant asked if anyone had any questions. I asked, facetiously, how do they turn off the falls? Not a dumb question, apparently. The diversion canal for the power plant has the capacity to handle the entire flow of the Niagara River, and from time to time they divert the whole river and the falls go dry. He said this was last done about four years ago. Well shut my mouth.
Once in recorded history the falls went dry naturally. On March 29, 1848, a gale pushed ice from the Niagara River backward into Lake Erie. The wind shifted and pushed the ice back into the river, forming an ice dam. The water drained from the riverbed, the American Falls went dry, and only a few streams went over Horseshoe Falls. Later that night, the pressure of the water behind the ice dam and the shifting of the ice allowed water to again flow down the Niagara River and over the falls.
Lets go to the pics:
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| American Falls |
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| American Falls |
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| Blue Ants Soaking Up American Falls |
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| Yellow Ants At Cave of the Winds At Foot of American Falls |
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| Feel the Power |
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| Soak Time for Yellow Ants |
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| Rainbow Bridge Over Niagara River |
The Discovery Center at the Falls has an interesting exhibit on theories for cause of ice ages. Apparently the cause that is gaining wide acceptance is know as Milankovitch cycles, named after a Serbian engineer and mathematician who theorized that wobbles in the orbit of the Earth around the Sun caused climate change. He calculated a full cycle of precession (look it up) of the Earth at 26,000 years, and the Earth's elliptical orbit of the Sun that rotates more slowly. The combined effects result in an oscillation in the Earth's orbit that causes the planet to warm or cool. Milankovitch developed his theory while interred during World War I. It did not gain acceptance until 1976, when studies of deep-ocean cores provided empirical support. If this has peaked your curiosity, here is a Wikipedia article that goes into a lot of detail.
Mileage: 15. Cumulative mileage: 6,128.
