Niagara almost stopped for 30 hours without freezing

In March 1848, Niagara Falls did not freeze: an ice jam at Lake Erie's outlet nearly cut off the river for some thirty hours.

The winter had been exceptionally cold. When the thaw loosened the sheets piled up on the lake, wind and current pressed them together between Buffalo and Fort Erie, just where the Niagara River begins. On the 28th and 29th, strong winds had driven enormous masses across Lake Erie. The current carried them to the river's entrance, where each sheet strengthened the dam. Around midnight on 29 March, the water level began to fall. By the following morning, the roar had faded and large stretches of the riverbed lay exposed.

The flour mill owners were the first to notice: their wheels stopped moving. Residents of Chippawa climbed down to the riverbed and found muskets, bayonets and swords then attributed to the battle fought there in 1814.

George W. Holley, a Niagara Falls resident and eyewitness, left behind a measurement that is harder to forget. He drove a horse and buggy into the rapids. Then a wagon pulled by four horses hauled out a squared pine timber twelve inches on a side and forty feet long; another log measured sixty feet, more than eighteen metres.

On the afternoon of the 30th, the wind changed direction, the ice jam broke apart and the river regained its flow.