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Nenana Ice Classic: Tanana River Ice Annual Breakup Dates, Version 2

Metadata Updated: February 22, 2025

The Tanana river in the Interior of Alaska usually freezes over during October and November. The ice continues to grow throughout the winter accumulating an average maximum thickness of about 110 cm, depending upon winter weather conditions.

The Nenana Ice Classic competition began in 1917 when railroad engineers bet a total of 800 dollars, winner takes all, guessing the exact time (month, day, hour, minute) ice on the Tanana River would break up. Each year since then, Alaska residents have guessed at the timing of the river breakup. A tripod, connected to an on-shore clock with a string, is planted in two feet of river ice during river freeze-up in October or November. The following spring, the clock automatically stops when the tripod moves as the ice breaks up. The time on the clock is used as the river ice breakup time.

Many factors influence the river ice breakup, such as air temperature, ice thickness, snow cover, wind, water temperature, and depth of water below the ice. Generally, the Tanana river ice breaks up in late April or early May (historically, April 20 to May 20). The time series of Tanana river ice breakup dates can be used to indicate climate change in the region.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. Non-Federal: This dataset is covered by different Terms of Use than Data.gov. License: No license information was provided.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date February 22, 2025
Metadata Updated Date February 22, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from nasa test json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date February 22, 2025
Metadata Updated Date February 22, 2025
Publisher NASA NSIDC DAAC
Maintainer
Identifier C1923770664-NSIDCV0
Data First Published 1917-04-01
Language en-US
Data Last Modified 2025-02-19
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 309d9d3d-cf52-494d-9961-0a294b545173
Harvest Source Id a73e0c30-4684-40ef-908e-d22e9e9e5f86
Harvest Source Title nasa test json
Homepage URL https://doi.org/10.5067/CAQ58H42LQY2
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -149.093 64.565 -149.093 64.565
Program Code 026:001
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 13e3ed1895e8570b9a8ba1514cc7ebe32f0e33cdcd1112c58df5c111927161ae
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial
Temporal 1917-04-01T00:00:00Z/2024-07-08T00:00:00Z

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