Strong winds sent a wall of ice crashing into cottages along the southwestern shore of Manitoba’s Dauphin Lake on May 10, 2013. A total of 27 houses near Ochre Beach were damaged, 13 beyond repair. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this view of the ice-covered lake on May 13.
Events like this, known as ice shoves, occur when chunks of floating ice are pushed rapidly toward the shoreline by strong winds. When the leading edge of a raft of floating ice reaches shore, large slabs of ice can surge ashore if winds provide enough momentum. Ice shoves occur frequently along lakes in sparsely-populated parts of northern Canada, but is rare that they cause significant damage.
NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Adam Voiland.
