Interesting Item on Climate

I received this in an Email from Clara Halvorson and wanted to share it with you. 

In Laura Ingalls-Wilder's   "The Little House on the Prairie" she described living through this 1911 freeze in Nebraska. 

  Margaret writes:

"Her mother had a cousin living in Niagara Falls that year.  She told the family that she and her neighbors woke up in the night feeling something was wrong.  

  It took a while but they finally realized that it was the lack of noise.  They had all become so used to the roar of the falls that the silence was unusual enough to alert their senses.  Of course at that time nearly all the houses were near the falls.  "

Having seen the force of the falls first hand I can say that it must have been unbelievably cold to stop the flow  traveling at 10-15 mph over the falls.

  I recall my grandfather speaking of the winters when he was a boy not many years after this picture was taken. He  described the waters where he lived, in Portsmouth, NH, as freezing over so people could walk across broad rivers and bays. The only difference was he was talking about salt water  -not fresh. This same area including Great and Little Bays has not frozen over so completely since I was  6 years old. Circa 1968. It may indeed indicate a strong warming trend. However, according to European weather experts. Europe is bracing for an extremely cold winter this year.  Hans I hope you have your skates sharpened.