Mud season (US English) or breakup (Canadian English) is a period in late winter and early spring when travel over ice is no longer safe and travel overland is more difficult as frozen earth thaws and soil becomes muddy from melting snow.
Mud season (US English) or breakup (Canadian English) is a period in late winter and early spring when travel over ice is no longer safe and travel overland is more difficult as frozen earth thaws and soil becomes muddy from melting snow.
Mud season occurs in places where the ground freezes in winter and thaws in spring. Dirt roads and paths become muddy because the deeply frozen ground thaws from the surface down as the air temperature warms above freezing. The frozen lower layers of ground prevent water from percolating into the soil so the surface layers of soil become saturated with water.
Clay-based soil, especially when combined with poor drainage, is especially prone to forming deep and sticky mud. In sandy soils, the top unfrozen layer becomes waterlogged during thaws, but does not form viscous mud. On the Great Plains, there is a particular type of clay bentonite clay or aluminum phyllosilicate that turns into a sticky mess called gumbo [1] during snowmelt and spring rains.
Mud season can be expensive for towns due to the damage done to dirt roads. One report concluded that the cost of re-engineering dirt roads so that they would remain passable during mud season in the state of Vermont could run as high as $140,000 per mile ($87,000/km). [2]
Transportation problems during mud season have military implications, due to the bogging down of horses and military equipment in deep mud.
During mud season, soil becomes fragile and care must be exercised in protected and recreational areas. [3]
"Breakup" originally referred to the "breaking up" of river and lake ice. This is an eagerly anticipated event in many regions of Canada, because it marks when different modes of transportation can be used. Vehicles from dog sleds to snowmobiles and even tractor trailers can safely traverse ice roads in the winter and aircraft with skis for landing gear can land on ice in winter, but not near breakup. By contrast after breakup, various boats can once again use the water.
The exact date this occurs varies across the North, and corresponds to different seasons in the indigenous calendars of different regions. In the Cree and Ojibwe calendars, one of the six seasons is called minoskamin (Woods Cree: ᒥᖪᐢᑲᒥᐣ, mithoskamin; [4] Atikamekw: miroskamin, etc.) which is usually translated as "breakup". For the Woods Cree of Northern Saskatchewan this occurred in roughly May and June on the English calendar before the effects of recent climate change. By contrast the New England mud season of (or "unlocking" as Kurt Vonnegut called it) is in March and April. [5]
Famously, the exact date of the breakup on the Yukon River in Dawson City has been the subject of gambling since the Klondike Gold Rush, providing climate researchers with a rare unbroken record of climate data in such a remote region. [6]
The sense of "breakup" was later expanded to the time of the year when the frozen soil that can support heavy vehicles softens. This is especially used in the oil patch (which is concentrated on the Great Plains and western portions of the boreal forest of Canada (i.e. the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin) when well drilling activity halts and work camps "break up" for the spring. [7] [8]
The term mud season is used in northern climates in North America, particularly in rural northern New England and the northern areas of the Great Lakes. It is often jokingly called the "fifth season". [9] While significantly muddy conditions also occur throughout the Appalachians and in other mountainous regions, they are not as tightly tied to season.
Similar terms are Swedish menföre "bad going" and Finnish kelirikko "broken state of roads" (lit. "weather-break"), but both also apply to when water is too iced over for boats but not strong enough to cross on foot or in other vehicles. Finnish eastern dialects also have the loanword rospuutto (IPA: [ˈrospuːtːo] ), which has the same usage as rasputitsa. [10]
The Rasputitsa in Russian (literally "season of bad roads" [11] ), or Bezdorizhzhya in Ukrainian, [12] is a term for the mud season that occurs in various rural areas of Eastern Europe, [12] when the rapid snowmelt or thawing of frozen ground combined with wet weather in Spring, or heavy rains in the Autumn, [11] [13] lead to muddy conditions that make travel on unpaved roads problematic and even treacherous. [11] [13]
Rasputitsa has repeatedly "rescued" Russia during wars by causing enemy vehicles and artillery pieces to become mired in the mud, and has been credited, alongside the general conditions of winter, with incumbering both the military campaigns of Napoleon and Hitler in the 20th century, as well as Putin in his 2022 invasion of Ukraine. [13]
Further back in history, the Mongols may also have been deterred from attacking Novgorod by the muddy bog produced by an early spring thaw. [14]
Prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, some analysts identified the logistical challenges of the mud season as a likely hindrance to any large-scale invasion in spring. [15] When Russia crossed the border, many of its mobile units found themselves stranded in fields and limited to major roads, where resistance and logistical issues significantly slowed the advance toward Kyiv and elsewhere. [16] [17] [18]
In Maine, Vermont, upstate New York, and New Hampshire, the phrase "mud season" can be used as a shorthand reference to the vicissitudes and peculiarities of life in the region. The term has been used as the title of magazines, [19] books, [20] and at least one movie. [21]
In physical geography, tundra is a type of biome where tree growth is hindered by frigid temperatures and short growing seasons. The term tundra comes through Russian тундра from the Kildin Sámi word тӯндар meaning "uplands", "treeless mountain tract". There are three regions and associated types of tundra: Arctic tundra, alpine tundra, and Antarctic tundra.
The cryosphere is an all-encompassing term for the portions of Earth's surface where water is in solid form, including sea ice, lake ice, river ice, snow cover, glaciers, ice caps, ice sheets, and frozen ground. Thus, there is a wide overlap with the hydrosphere. The cryosphere is an integral part of the global climate system with important linkages and feedbacks generated through its influence on surface energy and moisture fluxes, clouds, precipitation, hydrology, atmospheric and oceanic circulation.
Muskeg is a peat-forming ecosystem found in several northern climates, most commonly in Arctic and boreal areas. Muskeg is approximately synonymous with bog or peatland, and is a standard term in Western Canada and Alaska. The term became common in these areas because it is of Cree origin; maskek (ᒪᐢᑫᐠ) meaning "low-lying marsh".
Permafrost is soil or underwater sediment which continuously remains below 0 °C (32 °F) for two years or more: the oldest permafrost had been continuously frozen for around 700,000 years. While the shallowest permafrost has a vertical extent of below a meter, the deepest is greater than 1,500 m (4,900 ft). Similarly, the area of individual permafrost zones may be limited to narrow mountain summits or extend across vast Arctic regions. The ground beneath glaciers and ice sheets is not usually defined as permafrost, so on land, permafrost is generally located beneath a so-called active layer of soil which freezes and thaws depending on the season.
Mud is soil, loam, silt or clay mixed with water. It is usually formed after rainfall or near water sources. Ancient mud deposits hardened over geological time to form sedimentary rock such as shale or mudstone. When geological deposits of mud are formed in estuaries, the resultant layers are termed bay muds.
Rasputitsa, also called bezdorizhzhia, is the mud season that occurs in various rural areas of Eastern Europe, when the rapid snowmelt or thawing of frozen ground combined with wet weather in Spring, or heavy rains in the Autumn, lead to muddy conditions that make travel on unpaved roads problematic and even treacherous.
In geology, a hummock is a small knoll or mound above ground. They are typically less than 15 meters (50 ft) in height and tend to appear in groups or fields. Large landslide avalanches that typically occur in volcanic areas are responsible for formation of hummocks. From the initiation of the landslide to the final formation, hummocks can be characterized by their evolution, spatial distribution, and internal structure. As the movement of landslide begins, the extension faulting results in formation of hummocks with smaller ones at the front of the landslide and larger ones in the back. The size of the hummocks is dependent on their position in the initial mass. As this mass spreads, the hummocks further modify to break up or merge to form larger structures. It is difficult to make generalizations about hummocks because of the diversity in their morphology and sedimentology. An extremely irregular surface may be called hummocky.
Russian Winter, sometimes personified as "General Frost" or "General Winter", is an aspect of the climate of Russia that has contributed to military failures of several invasions of Russia and the Soviet Union. Mud is a related contributing factor that impairs military maneuvering in Russia and elsewhere, and is sometimes personified as "General Mud". Russians call those muddy conditions rasputitsa, which occur with autumnal rains and spring thaws in Russia and make transport over unimproved roads difficult.
Cold-weather warfare, also known as arctic warfare or winter warfare, encompasses military operations affected by snow, ice, thawing conditions, or cold, both on land and at sea, as well as the strategies and tactics used by military forces in these situations and environments.
The term freshet is most commonly used to describe a snowmelt, an annual high water event on rivers resulting from snow and river ice melting. A spring freshet can sometimes last several weeks on large river systems, resulting in significant inundation of flood plains as the snowpack melts in the river's watershed. Freshets can occur with differing strength and duration depending upon the depth of the snowpack and the local average rates of warming temperatures. Deeper snowpacks which melt quickly can result in more severe flooding. Late spring melts allow for faster flooding; this is because the relatively longer days and higher solar angle allow for average melting temperatures to be reached quickly, causing snow to melt rapidly. Snowpacks at higher altitudes and in mountainous areas remain cold and tend to melt over a longer period of time and thus do not contribute to major flooding. Serious flooding from southern freshets are more often related to rain storms of large tropical weather systems rolling in from the South Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico, to add their powerful heating capacity to lesser snow packs. Tropically induced rainfall influenced quick melts can also affect snow cover to latitudes as far north as southern Canada, so long as the generally colder air mass is not blocking northward movement of low pressure systems.
In environments containing permafrost, the active layer is the top layer of soil that thaws during the summer and freezes again during the autumn. In all climates, whether they contain permafrost or not, the temperature in the lower levels of the soil will remain more stable than that at the surface, where the influence of the ambient temperature is greatest. This means that, over many years, the influence of cooling in winter and heating in summer will decrease as depth increases.
Alexei Kondratyevich Savrasov was a Russian landscape painter and creator of the lyrical landscape style.
A dirt road or track is a type of unpaved road not paved with asphalt, concrete, brick, or stone; made from the native material of the land surface through which it passes, known to highway engineers as subgrade material.
In hydrology, snowmelt is surface runoff produced from melting snow. It can also be used to describe the period or season during which such runoff is produced. Water produced by snowmelt is an important part of the annual water cycle in many parts of the world, in some cases contributing high fractions of the annual runoff in a watershed. Predicting snowmelt runoff from a drainage basin may be a part of designing water control projects. Rapid snowmelt can cause flooding. If the snowmelt is then frozen, very dangerous conditions and accidents can occur, introducing the need for salt to melt the ice.
A string bog or string mire is a bog consisting of slightly elevated ridges and islands, with woody plants, alternating with flat, wet sedge mat areas. String bogs occur on slightly sloping surfaces, with the ridges at right angles to the direction of water flow. They are an example of patterned vegetation.
Palsas are peat mounds with a permanently frozen peat and mineral soil core. They are a typical phenomenon in the polar and subpolar zone of discontinuous permafrost. One of their characteristics is having steep slopes that rise above the mire surface. This leads to the accumulation of large amounts of snow around them. The summits of the palsas are free of snow even in winter, because the wind carries the snow and deposits on the slopes and elsewhere on the flat mire surface. Palsas can be up to 150 m in diameter and can reach a height of 12 m.
Svalbard is a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. The climate of Svalbard is principally a result of its latitude, which is between 74° and 81° north. Climate is defined by the World Meteorological Organization as the average weather over a 30-year period. The North Atlantic Current moderates Svalbard's temperatures, particularly during winter, giving it up to 20 °C (36 °F) higher winter temperature than similar latitudes in continental Russia and Canada. This keeps the surrounding waters open and navigable most of the year. The interior fjord areas and valleys, sheltered by the mountains, have fewer temperature differences than the coast, with about 2 °C lower summer temperatures and 3 °C higher winter temperatures. On the south of the largest island, Spitsbergen, the temperature is slightly higher than further north and west. During winter, the temperature difference between south and north is typically 5 °C, and about 3 °C in summer. Bear Island (Bjørnøya) has average temperatures even higher than the rest of the archipelago.
A frost boil, also known as mud boils, a stony earth circles, frost scars, or mud circles, are small circular mounds of fresh soil material formed by frost action and cryoturbation. They are found typically found in periglacial or alpine environments where permafrost is present, and may damage roads and other man-made structures. They are typically 1 to 3 metres in diameter.
The Hudson Plains Ecoregion is a vast, flat, and waterlogged landscape. This ecoregion covers a 369,000 square kilometer area along the south shoreline of the Hudson Bay, which includes the Canadian provinces of Eastern Quebec, Northern Ontario and Western Manitoba. Because of the location of the ecoregion, winter prevails for many months of the year and rising temperatures, along with melting ice, makes fog common. The short summers provide a home for thousands of migrating birds. The region is used by humans for its mineral resources and hydroelectric power as a result of the abundance of water and emergent societal needs. Though relatively uninhabited and undisturbed, the natural resources of the Hudson Plains are still subject to anthropogenic activities. Its climatic, geographic, and evolutionary patterns categorize it as one of many ecoregions in North America.
The Russian Kyiv convoy was a large column of Russian military vehicles stretching some 64 kilometres (40 mi) in Kyiv Oblast from Prybirsk to Hostomel via Ivankiv involved in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. It has been noted for initially threatening Kyiv, but then halting due to unclear reasons. Commentators have suggested that the large number of soldiers and vehicles may have had issues with fuel and food shortages, and may have also been delayed by attacks from the Ukrainian military.
During the Mongol invasion of the Rus' principalities in 1238-1240, Novgorod escaped destruction by the Mongols due to an early spring, which transformed the routes to Novgorod into a muddy bog.
