The temperatures warm, the river thaws and suddenly blockades of ice prevent water from flowing downstream.
Ice jams, or temporary dams made by ice getting stuck on obstructions like river bends and bridges, are relatively common along the Grand River as temperatures fluctuate.
One town in Ionia County — Portland — saw its first ice jam of the year this week. The jam naturally broke through the day, but it left waterlogged basements in its wake.
Mark Torregrossa, the chief meteorologist for MLive, said the severity of any one ice jam can be unpredictable.
“You don't know if it's going to hold there for a long time and really build the water behind it and maybe cause some flooding upstream,” he said, “or then when it breaks loose, the water also breaks loose and moves down."
One spot on the Grand River that sees an ice jam nearly every year is a stretch between two bridges in downtown Portland.
Timothy Fuller, the president of Opera Block Properties, owns multiple buildings adjacent to that stretch.
He said his properties saw standing water in their basements following the ice jam early this week.
“Enough to splash around in,” he said, “but no damage this time.”
Not at all, he said, like the flooding caused by an ice jam in 2019.
“When the water first came in, we had about a foot of it. We were in panic mode, and we went down into the basement and started pulling apart anything of value that we could get standing in this ice-cold water,” Fuller said. “Within 30 minutes, it was neck high.”
Dozens were evacuated due to flooding seven years ago. Fuller said he and his family didn’t move back into their loft for another year after the flood, and the repairs to his properties cost around $1.6 million.
“Truth be told,” he said, “we are not fully recovered from ’19.”
Fuller said that, while ice jams can be unpredictable, he is frustrated that they continue to form right outside his window.
“We’re looking at ice jams that seem like they form at the exact same place in the river every time,” he said. “To me, that signals that there’s something specific causing it. And if that’s the case, then as a community, as a city or even the state, we should be looking into that.”
Torregrossa said that extreme low temperatures in late January and early February will likely freeze stretches of the Grand River, and there will be risk of ice jams as it thaws again.
However, he said current conditions pose less of a threat of severe conditions.
“We're in drought,” Torregrossa said. “We have a low groundwater table right now. So, these low rivers, the flow that you were seeing in the fall in the summer, that continues. You don't get a lot of major ice jams when you have a situation like that.”
As Michigan approaches its season where ice jams are most common, Torregrossa warns not to try to fight water.
“Water wins,” he said. “Moving water is one of the most — if not the most — powerful forces on Earth. When you hear about the caution of an ice jam, heed the caution, because if Mother Nature and the ice and the water want to take you on, guess who loses. You do.”
