Strolling on New York’s East River 1867
Much of the US is suffering under a “polar vortex,” which has plunged temperatures into single digits and wind chills well into negative numbers. Here on the west bank of the Hudson River the temperature is around 4 F with a wind chill of negative 14 degrees F. Fortunately, the forecast is for more seasonable weather in a few days. So as we huddle in the cold, it seems worthwhile to look back at even colder winters where the east River, the Hudson and much of New York harbor simply froze.
Despite tidal currents that can run up to four knots, New York’s East River has frozen at least a dozen times between 1780 and 1888. The East River isn’t actually a river. It is a tidal strait tidal strait connecting Upper New York Bay to Long Island Sound. Nevertheless, it froze often enough so that after the particularly hard winter of 1866-1867,there was a public outcry that lead ultimately to the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge.
On Sunday, the 
We have recently posted about 
The 
Every year I go to the 
I am surprised that the Vikings didn’t discover this first. The Vikings did, after all, develop a 
Happy New Year! The New Year 2014 begins with both a new moon and a supermoon. The month also ends with a both a new moon and and a supermoon on the 30th. A supermoon is the term applied when the moon is at perigee, the closest approach the Moon makes to the Earth on its elliptical orbit. A supermoon during a full moon will cause the moon to appear up to 16% bigger than usual. A supermoon during a new moon will, of course, not appear larger, as the moon is in the shadow of the earth during a new moon and is not visible at all. Tides are usually higher during a supermoon.
In the list of the world’s 
MSC Monterey
Two recent items on sharks in the news — a photobombing shark off the coast of California and Australian sharks posting warnings on Twitter.
By definition, shipping is the ultimate offshore industry. For most, the business of shipping is largely invisible, literally beyond the horizon. I recently came across two representations of global shipping – a plot developed from ship’s logs from the 18th and 19th centuries and an animation of a week’s shipping traffic using AIS and satellite technology from 
The Chinese icebreaker 