USING LANGUAGE FOR RESEARCH ON PAST WEATHER—THE FROZEN MUSKOXEN. Nick sent me this article by Maddie Stone on the Earther website about an event in 2011—-“a freak winter tsunami that caused 52 muskoxen to become entombed in ice on the shores of Western Alaska”.
Joel Berger, a senior scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, asked a village elder about muskox dieoffs: “And so, I asked more about maybe he hasn’t seen a muskox die off but has he seen these kinds of storms, ice being fractured and piled up? And he said oh yea, happens all the time.”
The crucial evidence that these wind-driven polar ice-override surges which pile ice to 4 m high (roughly 36 feet) occur frequently: there is a word in the Iñupiaq dictionary for such an event: ivu.