Weird Square Iceberg Turns Out To Be Not As Weird As You'd Think

An odd rectangular iceberg recently broke
off the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica.

When you think of icebergs, you probably envision a jagged pile of ice sticking up from the water, with most of the iceberg still lurking underwater, ready to sink another ship like the Titanic.

This universal vision of icebergs is what recently made an Antarctic iceberg newsworthy.  It was a perfect rectangle. Flat on top, with straight vertical sides with sharp corners without any sign of imperfect geometry.  

According to LiveScience, the wonderfully rectangular gigantic piece of ice is called a tabular iceberg. LiveScience interviewed Kelly Brunt, an ice scientist with NASA and the University of Maryland.  Here's how she explained it.

Tabular icebergs like this one that made the news are always wide and flat and long, like a sheet cake. They split off from the edges of ice shelves, which are large blocks of ice connected toland but floating in the water surrounding places like Antarctica.  This particular iceberg came from the Larsen C ice shelf.

The Larsen C ice shelf made news last year, too, when an iceberg the size of Delaware broke awau from it. Many scientists saw this and the diminishing Larsen C ice shelf an ominous sign of global warming.

The recent rectangular iceberg isn't nearly as big as that giant Delaware sized one last year, so it isn't by itself much of a concern.

"What makes this one a bit unusual is that it looks almost like a square," Brunt said. Other scientists said it's common to see icebergs with relatively straight edges but it's rare to have a tabular iceberg with two corners at such right angles 

You can see a more typical, smaller, irregularly shaped tabular iceberg to left of the square one in the photo in this post.

Brunt guessed the iceberg was more than a mile across. Like most icebergs of all stripes, the majoritu of this one is hidden beneath the water's surface.

This one had to be newly-formed, she said, because the edges of it hadn't been rounded off by wind, waves and weather.

The top of the iceberg looks like a great place to go cross country skiing or something, but it's better to look at it from a distance. There are probably cracks and crevices opening or about to, and it would be dangerous to stand on this thing.

So, we'll admire it from a distance.

Another Hodgepodge Of Interesting Stuff Today

Not much left of this South Dakota ranch after a tornado earlier this month
A 10,000 pound tractor disappeared in the tornado and the
wreckage was later found in neighboring Montana.

It's a relatively quiet day in the weather department, so it's a good day to show a few fun and/or interesting tidbits I've accumulated over the past couple of weeks.

TORNADO STEALS TRACTOR

Near the beginning of the month a powerful tornado crossed the border between Montana and South Dakota. It's a remote part of the country, and there wasn't that much out there for the tornado to hit.

Except for Doug Davis' farm, which is in South Dakota but just 100 feet or so from the Montana border, was pretty much trashed by the tornado. For days afterward, he could not find a 10,000 pound tractor that was on his property. The tornado sucked it up and took it....somewhere.

That had to be a pretty damn strong tornado to do that.

Eventually, the wreckage of the tractor was found back across the border in Montana, having been drawn back there by the tornado's powerful circulation.

At last report, Davis was still missing an ATV, a boat and a camper, which all disappeared in the twister. Unfortunately, his home was also destroyed.

ICEBERG TSUNAMI THREAT?

Here's an unusual weather hazard. An iceberg has come very close to shore near a tiny village in Greenland. Parts of the village have been evacuated, because if a big chunk of the iceberg splits off, it could crash into the water and send a tsunami slamming into the village, says Reuters.

This iceberg is menacing a Greenland village
Photo by Ritzau Scanpix/Karl Petersen via Reuters  

DUST STORMS AND FLASH FLOODS

In the desert Southwest, it's monsoon season. Moisture coming in from the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean often create some dramatic weather in places like Arizona, Utah and the deserts of California.

This year is no exception. A massive haboob earlier this week roared across an area of Arizona near Gila Bend.

A lot of storm chasers captured it on film, including Reed Timmer, who always manages to be on the scene of the most extreme weather in the nation.

Haboobs form when strong downdrafts from monsoon thunderstorms form big gust fronts, which stir up walls of dust that blow across the desert. The one that Timmer and others captured was bigger than most.

Here's one of Timmers'  videos of the haboob, some of it in time lapse motion that's really cool:



The monsoon storms very often cause flash floods in what are usually dry washes. Here's a recent one in Utah captured by David Rankin:



WET HOTEL STAY

A couple weeks back, there was some serious flash flooding in and around Des Moines, Iowa. The following video shows how (badly) a hotel fared during the flooding: