Baby it's cold outside

Frigid air blasting south from Santa land has descended into Toronto, continuing the recent string of extreme cold weather alerts. Temperatures with wind chills expected to bottom out at -35 degrees Celsius over night, now that is bitter. The inner harbour has frozen and the Toronto ferries shuttle back and forth to the islands through a path cut by an ice breaker, although the ferry even gets stuck a time or two.

We venture close to the Portlands Energy Centre located beside the old Hearn Generating Plant and watch in awe as the twin smokestacks pump billowing clouds of waste exhaust and heat. Hearn was converted from coal burning to natural gas before being mothballed and replaced with the new Portlands combined cycle, natural gas fired electrical generating plant. The cloud looks interesting in the sky of blue.

Down by Cherry Beach we were able to venture out onto the frozen waters of Lake Ontario, passing over broken and frozen over mini-icebergs until we hit a wall of broken ice that piles up in a massive traffic jam. It looks like a current goes through the middle of the harbour and circles along the shoreline. A river of smaller ice chunks carves a path through the surrounding ice before the colder weather froze the river in place.

Posted by James Hamilton and Joe Hamilton. See more ice after the jump.

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