Land-fast sea ice at the top of the low tide beach towards the St Annes Pier steamer jetty, St Annes, Lancashire, UK
The winter of 2010-2011 included the coldest December since Met Office Records began in 1910. The mean December 2010 temperature was minus 1 degree Celsius. In some places the temperature was down to minus 10 degrees Celsius (14 F). Late November to Boxing Day 2010 included two spells of severe winter weather in the UK with very low temperatures and significant snowfall. The beach either side of St Annes, on Lancashire's Fylde Coast, displayed large area of land-fast sea ice blocks , several centimetres thick. Here, across a wide expanse of land-fast sea ice on the low tide sand beach, we see the wooden remains of the steamer jetty, now isolated from the rest of St Annes Pier, after disastrous fires in the 1970s and 1980s, resulted in the seaward sections of the pier being demolished. Paddle steamers used the North Channel of the Ribble Estuary to pick up passengers at the jetty. The North Channel, visible on maps from the 1890s, silted up after the training and dredging of the present Ribble channel to allow large ships to reach the Preston Dock. An afternoon sunlight view across ice beach on the north side of the pier.
Size: 3121px × 2077px
Location: Land-fast sea ice on sand beach towards St Annes Pier steamer jetty, St Annes, Lancashire, UK
Photo credit: © robert harrison / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: 2010, afternoon, annes, beach, big, blue, coast, december, freeze, frost, frosty, fylde, haze, hazy, ice, jetty, lancashire, land-fast, pier, sand, sky, st, steamer, sun, sunlight, tide, uk, view, winter, wooden
