An ice dam (or ice jam) occurs when water builds up behind a blockage of ice. Ice dams can occur in various ways which include a glacier blocking an unfrozen river and a thawing river being blocked by a still-frozen section further on. On a small scale the term can be used for ice blockages of gutters and spouts on buildings.
Read more about Ice Dam: Caused By A Glacier, On Rivers, On Roofs of Buildings
Famous quotes containing the words ice and/or dam:
“I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The devil take one party and his dam the other!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)