Extreme Cold Leads to Rare Freezing of Choptank River

Photo Courtesy of the Cambridge Police Dept.

(CAMBRIDGE, Md) – The extreme cold that’s Eastern Shore the last couple of weeks has left its mark on the Choptank River.

Plenty of pictures taken over the course of this cold snap have shown large portions of the Choptank and surrounding harbors frozen over.

For one Cambridge man who feeds the local ducks up to 100 pounds of food a week, it inteeruprts something he enjoys regularly.

“We haven’t had a streak of cold weather like this in a long time. And of course, my ducks are somewhere out in the middle of the river because they’re not back here where I feed them back here in the creek,” says Cambridge’s Jim Gschiedle.

We spoke with Choptank Riverkeeper Matt Pluta at ShoreRivers in Easton about the freeze. He tells us up to 90 percent of the river’s surface is under ice.

Pluta says something like this hasn’t happened in over a decade, and it’s impacting people in island communities.

He says, “There’s a crew that goes out to Poplar Island every day for work out there. They’re jammed up today because the ice is blocked in there at the narrows.”

But that large layer of ice covering the Choptank River isn’t all bad for the wildlife lurking below the surface.

As the frozen top and low temperatures are a benefit to them.

We’re seeing great clarity. When the ice isn’t there, the water gets really clear, water gets really clear. It’s got a lot of oxygen and it’s good for the fish. And so, you know, these cold conditions, that occur every so often are actually good and can help reset some of the problems that we see in water quality in the rivers,” says Pluta.

The Cambridge Police Department is urging people to not walk out onto the icy Choptank River.