Showing posts with label ice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ice. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

One of the weirdest things I've ever seen


  .


Ice shove - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_shove

An ice shove, ice surge, ice heave, ivu, or shoreline ice pileup is a surge of ice from an ocean or large lake onto the shore. Ice shoves are caused by ocean currents, strong winds, or temperature differences pushing ice onto the shore, creating piles up to 12 metres (40 feet) high.

"Ivu" sounds like some legendary creature like the Yeti or Abominable Snowman. Abominable Ice Shove?

Anyway, I've never seen anything quite like this. It was reassuring - somewhat - that this is actually a "thing" and not some freakish nightmare driven by climate change. As per usual, this video (a couple of years old now) was passed around without any explanation. The tinkling crystal-chandelier sound has an undertone of relentless chugging, like an awful ice train. That part of it I don't understand, at all. It still looks like some supernatural event to me, like a glacier somehow sped up about a million times.




Blogger's annoyed post-script. I can't find a thing on "ivu" except in that Wikipedia piece. Wikipedia defines it very strangely:

Ivu

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ivu or IVU may refer to:

Ice shove (Inupiat terminology is Ivu), a surge of ice from large bodies of water onto the shore
Impuesto sobre Ventas y Uso, the Puerto Rican sales and use tax
International Vegetarian Union, a non-profit organisation promoting vegetarianism
Intravenous urogram, a procedure to examine the urinary system
Ivu or Eve, a character from the manga Black Cat

It isn't even a REAL black cat, but a person, and nowhere is she called Ivu. I give up.


Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Salt frenzy: there IS a solution




Due to a couple of weeks of unseasonably cold weather, Vancouverites are scrambling around in their usual panic. White stuff is coming down out of the sky, and nobody knows what it is. This happens once every ten years or so. When it does, panic ensues. No one knows how to drive. No one knows how to WALK. There's this slippery stuff down there. The city offered citizens some free road salt, assuming everyone would be polite about it and take the allowed bucketful. That didn't happen.




The top story on CTV News (for several days running) had Tamara Taggert and Mike Killeen solemnly intoning about the Salt Frenzy resulting from Vancouver's "ice-pocalypse". To me, the whole thing looks fairly orderly, but who knows? If these people had been armed. . . (it would have been the United States). At least they didn't hit each other with their shovels.




I have the solution. Or at least, these people do. A handful of salt every few steps, with three adults and a child walking carefully in the salt-sprinkler's footsteps.

It works. But it wouldn't play very well on-air. Not enough frenzy, I guess.