Three-foot waves are rare in Long Island Sound; we get them only during storms. In this case, they came during an early-winter nor'easter rife with freezing rain. The waves crashing over these rocks left behind an increasingly thick layer of ice. Though ice on these shores is uncommon now, that wasn't always so; my grandparents have relayed stories from their childhood, when each winter the whole of nearby New Haven Harbor would ice over, allowing people to walk and cars to drive far out toward the breakers at the edge of Long Island Sound.
