sastrugi

Scientific  

/ să-stro̅o̅′gə,sä′strə- /

1. Long, wavelike ridges of snow, formed by the wind and found on the polar plains. Sastrugi are usually up to several meters high and are often parallel to the prevailing wind direction.

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Example Sentences

After two kilometers, we arrived to find only a sastrugi ridge, pockmarked wind deformations in the icy crust.

From Salon

There’s brash ice, pancake ice, bullet ice, green ice, frazil, nilas, breccia, shuga, slush ice, rotten ice, pressure ice, grease ice, ice dust, shorefast ice, ice flowers, ice haycocks, ice saddles, floes, calf bergs, growlers, and sastrugi, to name just a few.

From Literature

But the most difficult part of the journey, she said, was hauling her heavy load over sastrugi — wavelike speed bumps of snow and ice that can extend for miles.

From Seattle Times

All day, on skis, they each hauled sleds holding 220 pounds of gear across fields of ice waves called sastrugi.

From Seattle Times

By now, Roberts has guided or overseen numerous expeditions for Cooper, to the frozen ocean of the North Pole—where storms press the pack into “screw ice” and the wind forms sculpted ridges called sastrugi—and to the parallel universe at the extreme south.

From The New Yorker