A neat little video from the National Weather Service office in Burlington shows how the freezing weather quickly turned the Ausable River in upstate New York into a mess of ice.

For the first 14 seconds of the timelapse video, not a lot seems to happen. Then, extremely quickly, the whole river turns to ice and rises many feet up into the air before going back down again. The footage was recorded over the course of just three hours, starting at noon and ending at 3pm. So what caused this pile-up?

"Ice jams like this are caused when ice breaks up on rivers and the chunks of ice then jam up somewhere downstream on the river," the NWS explained on Twitter.

"This causes the regular flow of the river to be disrupted, leading to rapid rises (like this) until the ice jam breaks up and the regular flow resumes."

Further footage from the Au Sable Forks Fire Department shows a closer look at the ice breaking up and moving downriver.

-