How the sky freezes. Neva in winter Is the Neva frozen

, which took place during the Christmas holidays in 2013. It's time to talk about such natural attractions of St. Petersburg as rivers and canals. Let's start, of course, with the main thing.

St. Petersburg is not called the Venice of the North for nothing. In total, there are about a hundred rivers, branches, channels in St. Petersburg and a total length of 300 km. And the main river among all this water splendor is considered to be the beautiful Neva.

Many of us, guests of St. Petersburg, know what the Neva is like in the summer - large, full-flowing, navigable. Everyone knows its famous drawbridges, picturesque embankments, piers and many attractions along its banks. And few of the people who do not live in the northern capital imagine what the Neva looks like in winter. This is what I want to show you today.

A few words about Neva. The length of the river is 74 km. It (the only one!) flows out of Lake Ladoga and flows into the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea. The Neva has several arms.

There are five major ones. In the delta, the river divides into Nevka and Neva. Nevka splits into Bolshaya, Srednyaya and Malaya Nevka, and the Neva itself is divided into Bolshaya Neva and Malaya Neva. The Neva river is wide and deep. The depth of the Neva in some places reaches 24m. It's deeper than the Volga! In width, of course, the Neva is inferior to the great Russian river, but in some places the width reaches 1250 m, which is also quite decent.

Winter in St. Petersburg is special - windy, dank, cold even with a slight minus. It so happened that all the days of our trip in St. Petersburg were cloudy. So we didn't wait for the sun. It often began to snow, so daytime photos turned out to be gray, gloomy, as if the city was shrouded in thick haze.
But the Neva, both in ice captivity and in a gray haze, remains a beauty. Mighty and strong. For some reason, I imagined the Neva the same as I once saw the Volga in winter - a white, snow-covered, flat field. And the Neva turned out to be completely different - sharp, prickly, rearing, in broken ice floes, completely devoid of the Volga smoothness and peace. Here is such.

You can’t skate on such ice, you don’t look like skiing, and you can’t even just walk for your own pleasure, because you risk breaking all your legs. What are the oddities? Why is there such ice on the Neva? The thing is that this river freezes differently from others - lightly, from the banks to the center of the river. With a cold snap, ice floes gradually form on the Neva, then ice floes, which are carried away by the current, and they, carried by the current, bunch up, are compressed, forming ice hummocks. Hummocks are heaps of fragments of ice in the process of compression.

This is the Neva in winter. However, this powerful river cannot be the same throughout its entire length. It is different - both rearing and prickly, and evenly flowing. You will see for yourself after reading this article.
So, we begin our acquaintance with the winter Neva at its various points.

The Birzhevoy Bridge is thrown across the Malaya Neva. It connects Birzhevaya Square on the spit of Vasilievsky Island with Mytninskaya Embankment on the Petrogradskaya side. Malaya Neva is the second largest branch of the Neva delta after the Big Neva. It is in this place - at the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island - that the Malaya Neva departs from the Bolshaya Neva.

There is a ship at the Birzhevoy Bridge. "Flying Dutchman" is a complex of three premium restaurants, an exact copy of the 30-gun Dutch flute "Amsterdam" built in 1748.

The Peter and Paul Fortress, like many sights of St. Petersburg, also stands on the Neva.

The gentle slopes in the Neva are decorated with granite balls on pedestals. There is a nice tradition - newlyweds break their glasses about them for happiness. And the glasses really lie under this ball.

Broken Neva in winter.

Ahead of the Palace embankment of the Neva. It houses the buildings of the State Hermitage, the Russian Museum, the Marble Palace, as well as the magnificent Summer Garden and other sights of St. Petersburg.

Winter Palace.

Another granite ball is on the other side of the Strelka.

The Palace Bridge across the Neva is currently under repair. The work began in August 2012. They promise to complete it at the end of 2013. The bridge is functioning, but only half.

On the Petrograd embankment of the Bolshaya Nevka - one of the right arms of the Neva's children - stands the legendary cruiser "Aurora".

In the distance, one of the bridges of the Neva - Liteiny Bridge.

We drive along the Trinity Bridge.

Winter nights have one definite advantage over the famous Summer nights. In winter, bridges are not built at night, so there are no temporary restrictions on movement around St. Petersburg. Another amazing plus of winter is night photographs of the Neva in winter, its bridges, embankments, structures, which are incredibly picturesque at this time.
Sphinxes on the University Embankment next to the Academy of Arts.

Another drawbridge across the Neva is Blagoveshchensky Bridge. This is the first permanent bridge across the Bolshaya Neva. It connects Vasileostrovsky district (Vasilyevsky island) with the central part of the city.

In conclusion of my story about the Neva in winter, I want to show you one of the most beautiful bridges across the Neva (if not the most beautiful) - the Bolsheokhtinsky Bridge. It connects the historical center of the city with the Malaya Okhta area. I will tell you more about this attraction in the next posts, and now photos.

Please note that the Neva is not frozen everywhere. This is due to warm drains - industrial and municipal. Another reason for the non-freezing of the Neva is abnormally warm weather. When we were in St. Petersburg, the weather was from +2 to -5 degrees. You understand that there are not enough degrees for the complete freezing of the river. Once I saw how the boys walked on the ice (next to the Academy of Arts), so my heart almost broke - the ice near the shore is thin, thin. There is a port nearby, perhaps the non-freezing of the river in this place is also connected with this.

It is known that two ice drifts pass on the Neva. The first is in April, when the Neva is covered with its own ice. The second - two weeks after this ice drift - is Ladoga, then white ice blocks from Lake Ladoga move along the Neva. In this regard, in St. Petersburg and in May it is quite cool.
For almost two centuries of observations of the Neva, it has been noted that, on average, the Neva freezes on November 13, opens on April 9. So the Neva is in ice captivity for a little less than six months. Here are the stats...
And we have not so much time left when spring comes and the ice on the Neva breaks. I am sure that the Neva in spring is no less romantic than the Neva in winter. Who does not believe, see for yourself.
To be continued...

The Neva River is one of the most beautiful rivers in Russia. It is familiar to most people thanks to the beautiful St. Petersburg, located on its banks. As is known from the school geography course, the Neva is one river, originating in Lake Ladoga, here is its source. In the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, the Neva Bay is located, where the Neva flows, there is its mouth.

Neva

The river flows through the territory of the Leningrad region and the city of St. Petersburg. Its length is 74 km, the length in a straight line from the source of the Neva to its mouth is 45 km. The depth averages from 8 to 11 m, the deepest mark is 24 m. The Neva carries its waters along a plain called the Neva Lowland. The banks descend steeply to the water, their height is 4-5 m, at the mouth of the river they are more gentle - 3-4 m. The place where the Neva flows is the Gulf of Finland, it starts, as already mentioned, in Lake Ladoga.

The width of the river is on average 600 m, the widest point reaches one kilometer. Compared to other low-lying water bodies, it is quite fast-flowing. The current speed is more than 1 m per second. The Neva River bends quite sharply in three places.

At the Ivanovsky rapids. Approximately three-kilometer section of the river with shallow depth, frequent shallows and a high flow rate of up to 4 m per second. It is located near the city of Otradnoe.
Near Ust-Slavyanka - the historical district of St. Petersburg.
At the Smolny Institute. This historic building is a monument of the era of early classicism, designed by the architect D. Quarenghi. Currently the residence of the governor.

The Neva, with a length of 75 km, is one of the largest, deepest and deepest rivers in Europe. Due to the uniform flow of water from Lake Ladoga (source), there are practically no spring floods on the river.

Neva Delta - St. Petersburg

The city of St. Petersburg was founded and built in a low-lying and swampy place. To drain the swamps, it was necessary to dig one hundred and one canals and a large number of ponds. The soil excavated during the digging of the canals was used to raise the level of the islands. Over time, many of them lost their significance, they were covered with earth. Now the number of islands has been reduced to 59.

The Neva Bay, where the Neva flows into, is located in the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea. At its confluence, the river forms a branched delta with many islands, which are connected by channels. On these islands, in fact, St. Petersburg is located. The most famous islands are Zayachiy and Vasilyevsky. On the first one is the Peter and Paul Fortress, on the second one there are the famous St. Petersburg sphinxes and the stock exchange building.

Emperor Peter I had a dream to divide the largest of the islands, Vasilyevsky, at the mouth of the Neva with canals, to make it look like a corner of Amsterdam. The dreams of the ruler were not destined to come true. An associate of Emperor Peter I A. Menshikov squandered the funds available in the treasury. For a long time, people refused to settle on the island, since there were no roads here. Its mass settlement could be carried out only after the construction of bridges across the Neva.

The basin area of the water artery of St. Petersburg is about 5 thousand km 2, including Onega and Ladoga lakes. It is distinguished by a complex structure of the hydrological network. The basin includes about 26.3 thousand lakes, 48.3 thousand rivers. 26 rivers and small rivers will flow directly into the Neva. Its main tributaries: on the right side - Izhora, Slavyanka, Mga, Tosna, Murzinka, on the left - Black River and Okhta.

Name etymology

There are several versions of the origin of the name of the river. The first, Finnish, from the word "neva", which translates as a treeless swamp. Translated from the Sami, the word "nёvё" means small, fast. The second version is based on the Swedish word "ny(en)" - new. There is also a Slavic hypothesis about the origin of the name Neva. From the annals it is known that Lake Ladoga, which is the source of the Neva, in the old days was called Nevo, which meant “new”. Apparently, the tribes that previously inhabited these lands were eyewitnesses to the release of water from the banks of the reservoir and the birth of the river.

St. Petersburg floods

The city is located in low-lying and swampy places, on islands connected by channels, rivers and canals. During strong autumn winds blowing from the southwest, water surges into the Gulf of Finland, where the Neva flows, and from there it flows along the river and channels into the city. Floods are frequent and sometimes have catastrophic consequences. Near St. Isaac's Square there is a stele with marks of all known floods. The highest mark is at the level of 4.21 m. This flood occurred in 1824 and was reflected in the work of A.S. Pushkin "The Bronze Horseman".

In St. Petersburg on the Neva, floods occur from September to December. They cause significant damage to the city. The last very dangerous flood, when the water mark on the Kronstadt footstock was 220 cm, happened in 2007. In 2011, the construction of a complex of protective structures in the Neva Bay was completed. It was activated during the surge on December 28, 2011. This helped to avoid a very dangerous flood, according to experts, the water level could have risen to 281 cm. If the dam had not been closed in time, the city would have suffered multi-billion dollar damage.

Cities on the Neva

In total, there are four cities on the banks of the Neva. This is primarily St. Petersburg, located on the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland. In addition, Otradnoye, Kirovsk, Shlisselburg, located at the outlet of the Neva from Ladoga, stand on the river. Numerous small settlements are located on the banks.

Otradnoe

Before the revolution, the village of Otradnoye was a place of out-of-town recreation for residents of the capital. Beautiful places, fresh air and a clear river attracted residents of the city in the summer. Now Otradnoye, with a population of 25.3 thousand people, is a rather large industrial center that has its own Pella shipbuilding plant, the Lyubimiy Krai confectionery association, Lenrechport, Nevsky Plant Electroshield JSC, and others. The city, which received in 1970 year, its status as a result of the annexation of the villages of Ivanovskoye and Ust-Tosno, has more than five hundred years of history.

It is located 18 km from the Rybatskoye metro station, which is part of the territory of St. Petersburg.

Kirovsk

Kirovsk was founded in 1931 on the high left bank of the Neva as a city for the builders of the Kirov State District Power Plant. Distance from St. Petersburg - 35 km. Currently, it is an industrial city with a population of 26,000 people. Here is the plant "Ladoga", a house-building plant, a branch of the concern "Okeanpribor" and many others. The M18 highway passes through Kirovsk, connecting the city of St. Petersburg with Murmansk. The city bears the name of the outstanding figure of the Soviet Union Sergei Mironovich Kirov. It has a pier and the Nevdubstroy railway station.

Shlisselburg

The city of Shlisselburg was founded as a fortress. It was founded in 1323 by Prince Yury of Novgorod at the exit of the Neva from Ladoga on Orekhovy Island and was called "Oreshek". The fortress was wooden, after 25 years the Novgorodians laid stone walls. It played an important strategic role and opened the way to the sea for Novgorod.

More than once "Oreshek" withstood the siege of the Swedes, but in 1613 it was captured by them and received a new name - Noteburg, which in Swedish meant the city of nuts. After 89 years, the settlement was conquered by Peter I. He gave it its modern name.

On the left bank of the river, a settlement with the same name was formed, which in 1780 was given the status of the city of Shlisselburg. Now its population is 15 thousand people. The road H135 Shlisselburg - Kirovsk - Petersburg was laid to St. Petersburg. The distance to the northern capital is about 50 km.

How the Neva freezes.
Huge, the size of a three-story house, barges pass a hundred meters from my window less and less often. The chic hair of a poplar nearby, on the shore, has turned yellow, and it, noticeable so far only at the foot, begins to lose foliage. The distances are decreasing, the air becomes empty and transparent, here in the room, through the old frame, the cold is already leaking.
The newspapers wrote that the navigation season is closing and soon the thirteen major drawbridges will finish their thousand-odd draws, and the inconvenience for night riders will cease to be until the next season ...
The Neva is a sovereign river, only 74 kilometers long, full-flowing, in terms of water flow it is almost like the Volga in the Nizhny Novgorod region, at the confluence of the Oka, and given that its width is much smaller, then you can understand the full power of the current. The deep one, the Neva, is not inferior to the Volga, and even surpasses it, in the fairway it reaches 24 meters, it is navigable throughout (all!) Its length! By the way, is there another similar phenomenon in the world? The deep, strong river has only two small tributaries and flows into a shallow, fresh sea.
The Neva has no source, more precisely, the source is Lake Ladoga, in which it immediately, powerfully originates, then to the very mouth it is practically not replenished in its short, powerful current, breaking up into three large navigable arms, flows into the Gulf of Finland.
And the Neva is overflowing not with a spring flood, but with an autumn “puff” of water from the Baltic.
So, the Neva freezes unusually. Usually, all rivers freeze from the coast: first in narrow tributaries, then from the banks to the rapids (places of the most intense flow) and then completely. Well, of course, with the exceptions that only confirm the rule, and with the exception of the springs on them, which do not freeze in the most severe frosts, forming ice slides with a breakthrough of water here and there ...
First, huge dry cargo ships and nimble technical vessels disappear from the Neva. For a while, private plastic dishes are still flickering back and forth. The water gets dark, as it gets dark in all the reservoirs of Russia in late autumn and becomes cold. The river is completely empty. Only seagulls, and ducks remaining to hibernate, brighten up her loneliness a little. After some time, rare fragile ice floes appear, torn off somewhere from the already freezing calm surface of Ladoga, carefully carried to the sea by the bored Neva. There are more ice floes, they are getting thicker and thicker, but in terms of area they are commensurate with each other, as if released according to an unknown pattern. Then they swim completely, pushing, carried by a powerful current. Neva no longer treats them carefully. Pushes ashore, crushes, in a wild rage, about the stone supports of bridges, indifferent to any passions. The ice is still moving, forming traffic jams in some places. Ice jams become longer in time and larger in size. Impatient ice floes, striving no matter what to the sea, press on the slowed down goods, piling up hummocks, resembling many times enlarged fragments of broken window glass, swept away on the floor with a broom and, for some reason, not removed by the hostess.
The biggest congestion has already happened somewhere in the lower reaches and the arriving ice floes only increase its area and in the distance, clearly visible from my window, the boundary of the water and the surface already completely littered with ice. It is moving upstream before our eyes, and in one night the continuously arriving ice floes will hide the entire recalcitrant river under their accumulation. Rearing against each other, sticking out in all directions, transparent, frozen; here and there they move a little and freeze again. In some places, randomly, islands of pure water remain, it does not freeze for a long, long time and turns black icy, hovering in even colder air like boiling water, then the frost will take its toll, and where the water will freeze more slowly. And so the picture will turn out: hummocks - ice blocks sticking out randomly in all directions and even crawling far ashore, limited in their expansion only by steep banks and trunks of coastal trees, small areas of thin smooth ice and black, here and there, seeming bottomless , rapids.
You can’t skate or ski on such ice, and even on foot in the most severe frosts you won’t get to the other side without risk to health and life. Not according to salary, walking on the royal river with your feet.
Over the course of winter, sharp corners will be significantly smoothed out, everything will be powdered with snow, but the battlefield of the elements will be visible until spring.
So you will, on your way (and I have been like this more than once before), you will see instead of a frozen surface an ice windbreak, do not be surprised: this is how the Neva freezes ...

"Neva, Neva, we won't get tired of admiring you!
We sing with soul about our own, about the dear wonderful city on the Neva!"

(The song "Neva, Neva, Leningraders do not love you in vain!"

to verses by S. Fogelson and music by V. Solovyov-Sedoy)

It is rather difficult to imagine the city of St. Petersburg without its magnificent sight - the Neva River.

These two components will never be separated from each other, because we say Petersburg and imagine a stormy, recalcitrant, but so majestically beautiful Neva, which at first sight amazes with its strength, power and beauty.

When the conversation turns to the Neva River itself, we immediately imagine St. Petersburg with its inexhaustible beauty of narrow streets, the solemnity of architectural buildings, the murmur of numerous rivers and canals, and, of course, with its unique energy that penetrates almost any person forever, filling his heart with love and joy.

Yes, of course, the Neva River is inseparable from its city of St. Petersburg, it is one whole, combining solemnity and beauty, mystery and openness, joy and light, but such a pleasant sadness.

"The city sleeps, shrouded in mist..."

The city sleeps, shrouded in mist,
Lights flicker a little...
Far away, beyond the Neva,
I see reflections of dawn.
In this distant reflection
In these reflections of fire
Awakening lurks
Sad days for me...

"How can you look at the Neva..."

How can you look at the Neva
How dare you climb bridges?
It's not for nothing that I have a sad reputation
Since the time you dreamed.
Black angels' wings are sharp,
The final judgment is coming soon
And crimson bonfires
Like roses bloom in the snow.

Griffin on University Embankment. Vasilievsky island. Saint Petersburg.

Neva River - brief information

Length - 74 km, of which 32 km - on the territory of St. Petersburg
The average width is 200-400 meters, the widest part - 1000-1250 m - in the delta at the Nevsky Gates of the Commercial Sea Port, the narrowest 210 m - opposite Cape Svyatka at the beginning of the Ivanovsky Rapids
Depth - from 4 m at the Ivanovsky rapids to 24 meters at the Liteiny bridge
The shores are not steep, but immediately go deep, which makes it possible for ships to come close to the shores
The Neva River has a basin of 281,000 square kilometers, on the territory of which there are 50,000 lakes, the largest of them are Ladoga and Onega, and 60,000 rivers flow, the total length of which is 160,000 km. There is only one other such system in the world - the Great Lakes in North America.

Oreshek Island, Shlisselburg Fortress

The source of the Neva River is located at the Shlisselburg Bay, where on the island of Oreshek in 1323, Prince Yuri Danilovich, the grandson of Alexander Nevsky, founded the Shlisselburg Fortress, unique in its architecture.

Peter and Paul Fortress

House of Peter I St. Petersburg, Petrovskaya embankment, 6.

Palace bridge and the panorama of the Admiralteyskaya embankment.

After passing 74 km from Lake Ladoga to the Gulf of Finland, forming a vast delta, the Neva flows into the Gulf of Finland.

At the mouth of the river is St. Petersburg, which is often called the Venice of the North and an open-air museum.

Novo-Mikhailovsky Palace.

Admiralteyskaya embankment

Main Admiralty.

St. Petersburg Naval Institute.

Pier - Lieutenant Schmidt Embankment.

Embankment Lieutenant Schmidt - the right bank of the river. Bolshaya Neva, from the bridge of Lieutenant Schmidt to the 23rd line of Vasilyevsky Island.

The building of the College of Foreign Affairs.

The house of E. P. Cazaleta is the Tenishev Mansion.

Sailboat "Young Baltic". Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Monument to Krusenstern. Embankment Lieutenant Schmidt. Vasilievsky island. Saint Petersburg.

Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin.

University embankment.

University embankment in the 19th century.

Spit of Vasilyevsky Island.

Palace of Emperor Peter II.

Buildings of the Kunstkamera and the Academy of Sciences.

View of the University Embankment. The Kunstkamera and the Peter and Paul Fortress

Playful kiss)) Mytninskaya embankment of Petrogradsky Island. Neva River. The ladder of the restaurant-landing stage "Flying Dutchman". Saint Petersburg

Night River Neva. The smallest pier. Embankment of Lieutenant Schmidt of Vasilyevsky Island. In the distance - the English Embankment of the second Admiralty Island. Saint Petersburg

The same bridge, the same palace))) Night river Neva. Divorced Palace Bridge. Across the river on the left is the Hermitage. Saint Petersburg

Night Neva. The building of the Main Admiralty. Admiralteyskaya embankment, 2. St. Petersburg

Cake for two))) Exchange square. Spit of Vasilyevsky Island. Neva River. In the distance - the Palace embankment. Saint Petersburg

true Petersburgers eat smelt.

Eyewitnesses say that the water in the Neva boiled like in a cauldron and reversed the current, barges and ships were thrown like chips, and sailboats were carried to the embankment. Palace Square was flooded with water and, together with the Neva, it was a huge lake, and under the rubble on the 9th line of Vasilyevsky Island, the corpses of people and livestock accumulated. Crazed people clung to lampposts and climbed trees. A resident of one of the houses on the Vyborg side saved the baby, who ended up in a box, which was carried to the porch of his house. There were also funny cases. Husband and wife managed to survive by floating on a door torn off by a storm. The husband had a chicken in his hands, and the wife had a dog.

For a long time, the cause of this disaster could not be explained. At first it was believed that the west wind drives water from the Gulf of Finland and raises the level of the river. Under Peter the Great, they began to build canals so that water would go into these channels and the water level in the Neva would decrease. The excavated soil was used to raise the foundations of buildings. After the flood of 1777, the canals began to be built more actively and Obvodnaya and Ekaterininsky, Kryukov and other channels appeared. But the constructed channels did not affect the water level and served only as transport arteries. Only at the end of the 19th century, scientists determined that the floods were caused by long waves that arise in the Baltic Sea in autumn, run through the bay in 7-9 hours and raise the level of the Neva by 2-2.5 meters in the absence of wind. With the wind, the waters rose even higher - to a catastrophic level of 3 - 4 meters.

For reference: a flood is considered to be a rise in the water level by more than 160 cm above the ordinary. The rise of water up to 210 cm is considered dangerous, up to 299 cm - especially dangerous and more than 300 cm - catastrophic. Since 1703, there have been more than 300 floods, the largest of them - in 1824, when the water level rose 421 cm above the ordinary. In 1924 the water rose to 380 cm, in 1777 to 321 cm and in 1955 to 293 cm.

To protect St. Petersburg from floods, in 1979 the construction of a unique complex of protective structures began - a dam connecting the shores of the Gulf of Finland and passing through Kronstadt. Since the mid-90s, due to a lack of funds, the construction of the dam was frozen and resumed only in 2006. The commissioning of the facility took place in August 2011. This unique hydraulic structure helps to prevent the occurrence of catastrophic floods with water rise up to 5 meters. In addition to the main task, the dam is part of the ring road (KAD).

White Nights is one of the unofficial symbols of the city.

When the evening dawn converges with the morning and twilight lasts all night, the famous white nights come.

White Nights is a visiting card of St. Petersburg. On summer white nights, the wings of St. Petersburg bridges rise and caravans of ships pass along the Neva. And then it seems that the whole city is floating into the unknown.

Houses are sailing like ships from distant lands,

Calm thoughts without disturbing

White night - today you are my ocean,

I like your soul big.

In the 19th century, bright summer nights in the capital were romanticized and given a mystical meaning. Pushkin, Dostoevsky and other classics of Russian literature wrote about white nights.

N. Gogol, continuing the artistic study of this phenomenon, wrote: "... on a white night, the city seems to be immersed in" dreaminess "and" thoughtfulness "...

Numerous events are dedicated to them in the modern city, such as the Stars of the White Nights art festival and the White Night Swing jazz festival.