Pancake ice is a form of ice that consists of round pieces of ice with diameters ranging from a few inches to many feet, depending on the local conditions that affect ice formation. It may have a thickness of several inches. Pancake ice features elevated rims with a nearly uniform height of a few inches. The rim is formed by piling the frazil ice/slush/etc. up the edges of pancakes when they collide, both due to random bumping into each other and because of periodic compressions at wave troughs. These rims are the first indication of the onset of the formation of the pancake ice from less consolidated forms of ice.
Pancake ice may be formed in two ways. It may be formed on water covered to some degree in slush, shuga or grease ice. Alternatively, it may be created by breaking ice rind, nilas or even gray ice in the agitated conditions.
Famous quotes containing the word ice:
“Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)