LiveScience.com reports that waves of frozen ice known as ivus recently moved onto an Alaskan road creating large ridges full of car-sized ice chunks. One of the ridges was 20 feet high.
Two ice surges, known to Alaska Natives as ivus, stunned residents who had never seen such large blocks of ice rammed ashore.
"It just looked like a big old mountain of ice,'' said L.A. Leavitt, 19, who left his nightshift job at the city to check out the ridges.
Ivus are like frozen tsunamis and crash ashore violently. They have killed hunters and are among the Arctic's most feared natural phenomena.
The ivus crashed ashore Tuesday after strong winds from Russia and eastward currents began pushing pack ice toward Barrow last weekend, said North Slope Borough disaster coordinator Rob Elkins.
By late Monday, thick, old sea ice known as multiyear ice had shoved younger, thinner ice onto shore.
We found some photographs of ivus, also called ice shoves, here on a website belonging to Andy Mahoney.
