Friday, September 30, 2011

Presure Ridges on the Ice

A pressure ridge is an ice formation typically found on large frozen lakes or sea ice during the winter. In the most basic sense, a pressure ridge is a long crack in the ice that occurs because of repeated heating and cooling on the surface of the lake.
In cases of extreme cold, ice will shrink in volume like any other solid, opening up cracks in the surface of lakes that are completely frozen over. The cracks quickly fill with water and freeze again, but when the temperature rises later, the ice expands and forces itself upward along the lines of the crack, in much the same fashion that plate tectonics creates mountain ranges, albeit on a much smaller scale. Pressure ridges can sometimes extend for miles, making an ice road impassable for truckers hauling freight to far northern locations. (The definition)

Ok free science lesson, Not to much else to say about it. The ice is ever changing, so the ridges are always different. The pictures I took hardly show the true beauty of the ice. The bluest blue I've ever seen. I find myself stumbling to look for the words to describe the sheer color and....(stumbling) Take the bluest sky you've ever seen, and multiply it by 10...at least. I'll let the pictures do the talking.......





















Once again, the human eye proves more powerful than the camera. In the next two pictures, you can just barely see the sliver of the moon as you look between the ice. Much better live...








That is a brief tour of the Pressure Ridges. Also I got some pretty good pictures of Mt Erebus, history to follow. A big thanks to Wikipedia for making my explanations both factual, and extremely easy to write. (read copy)






Well that's today's tour of the sights of Antarctica, till next time.......


Till next time...."Cooking on Ice"

1 comment:

  1. Wow Bill, that is pretty awesome. What an experience. Keep up the updates!

    ReplyDelete