Some of our regular walks take us over the Rt 376 bridge downstream of the Red Oaks Mill dam and I try to take a picture whenever we cross.

For reference, two years ago in December 2016:

Red Oaks Mill Dam 2016-12-11

January 2018:

Red Oaks Mill Dam – 2018-01-13

April 2018:

Red Oaks Mill Dam – 2018-04-08

October 2018:

Red Oaks Mill Dam – 2018-10-29

November 2018:

Red Oaks Mill Dam – 2018-11-18

December 2018:

Red Oaks Mill Dam – 2018-12-31

The dam breast seem from the north (left in above pictures) in December 2018:

Red Oaks Mill Dam – north view – 2018-12-30

Searching for the obvious keywords will produce far more pictures than the subject may deserve.

Getting hydropower from the rubble would require considerable capital investment …

Custom-trimmed icicles festoon a tree trunk lodged over the crumbling Red Oaks Mill dam:

Red Oaks Mill Dam – ice formation

Last September those logs were in the same position:

Wappinger Creek – Red Oaks Mill Dam – 2016-09-23

The lighter debris comes and goes at the whim of the waters.

The sprayward side of this branch must have an inch of ice wrapped around it:

Red Oaks Mill Dam – ice coated branch

A quiet day for a walk…

Two recent walks showed the wintry side of the Mighty Wappinger Creek at Red Oaks Mill:

Red Oaks Mill Dam 2016-12-11

Plants growing on mid-stream rocks accumulate ice during a cold snap:

Red Oaks Mill Dam 2016-12-11 – ice on rocks 2

Even bare rocks sprout rims:

Red Oaks Mill Dam 2016-12-11 – ice on rocks 1

A week later, half a foot of snow added highlights:

Red Oaks Mill Dam 2016-12-18

Warmer air over the snow and ice filled the valley with low-lying fog:

Red Oaks Mill Dam 2016-12-18 – upstream fog

Although it’s not quite as pastoral, a touch of pictorial graffiti recently appeared under the bridge carrying Rt 376 over the creek:

Red Oaks Mill Dam 2016-12-18 – graffiti

The “No war just smoke” tag suggests someone with a fundamental misunderstanding of life, somewhat along the lines of those absurd “Coexist” bumper stickers.

Anyhow, a happy holiday to one & all…

Heavy rain during an unseasonably warm spell rearranged the deadwood over the Red Oaks Mill Dam:

Red Oaks Mill Dam – 2016-03-04

Much of the wood collects around the pool on the other side of the bridge where the Mighty Wappingers Creek makes a right-angle turn to the left and continues toward the Hudson.

After the rain, the weather became much colder (which was OK, as I didn’t have to shovel the rain off the driveway), and the spray froze on the deadwood:

Red Oaks Mill Dam – icicles on deadwood

A few weeks ago, we walked by the dam at the right moment to catch the sun highlighting the rubble upstream of the decaying dam breast:

Red Oaks Mill Dam – dam breast upstream rubble

There won’t be much left in a few more decades …

A Great Blue Heron kept watch over us from the decaying spillway as we walked along on Old Mill Road:

Heron at Red Oaks Mill Dam – spillway

A mid-stream perch provided a better vantage point:

Heron at Red Oaks Mill Dam – midstream

The concrete slab in the lower right corner came from the dam breast.

The camera never lies, but if you could look upward just a bit, you’d see the unending stream of cars passing by on Red Oaks Mill Road at the Rt 376 intersection …

We walked past the Red Oaks Mill dam on a mild and dead-calm afternoon, with the headwater like a mirror:

Red Oaks Mill Dam – still water

I liked the smooth curves formed where the surface drops through the rubble:

Red Oaks Mill Dam – water curvature at breast

We wonder how far upstream the dam affects the water level, because, after it completely disintegrates and washes away, the creek level will definitely fall. The flow rate surely makes the calculation more difficult than just tracing contour lines from the dam breast upstream until they meet the bottom of the channel…

After the January snowstorm, everything above the water downstream of the Red Oaks Mill dam featured a snow cap rimmed with ice:

Red Oaks Mill Dam – downstream ice

The jet emerging from a deep notch in the dam breast on the near side of the ice sheet chewed through the concrete-and-rubble structure:

Red Oaks Mill Dam – central flume

Upstream, graceful curves in the ice highlight the flow streamlines:

Red Oaks Mill Dam – upstream ice

Yes, that was on the same walk when we found the severed head…