Strudel (ice)
Vertical hole in sea ice / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Strudel (ice)?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
A strudel /ˈstruːdəl/ (plural: strudel)[1][2] is a vertical hole in sea ice through which downward jet-like, buoyancy-driven drainage of flood water is thought to occur.[3][4][5] This feature is less than a few tens of meters in size and typically occurs within 30 km from a river mouth, in the sea ice expanse that is fastened to the coastline (known as fast ice).[3][5] Once the water that flooded the ice has completely drained off the ice surface, strudel become recognizable by a radial pattern of feeder channels that lead to the hole.[3][5][6] They are elongated and irregularly spaced, with the larger ones up to several kilometers apart. Their distribution tends to be controlled by weak areas in the ice – in places, they line up along fractures or refrozen extensional cracks.[3] The ice sheet where they occur may be 2 m in thickness, at water depths (below the ice) in the order of a few meters.
The term strudel is German,[1] and designates a whirlpool, in reference to the water vortex that forms above these features during drainage. It has been suggested that this vortex could present a hazard for investigators wishing to study this phenomenon in the field, and that this would explain, at least partly, why little is known about strudel.[7]