For the past 24 hours we've been passing by icebergs and glaciers.  If you love snowy mountains, bitter cold and the splendor of winter in May, you'd want to be on the Oceania Riviera cruising by the coastline of Alaska. To recap, woke up after sleeping for 13 hours to see these scenes from our veranda. We had never before seen people on the deck below us, but I guess for the Hubbard Glacial watch, the doors to this front portion of the ship was opened.  Went down for an Italian lunch plus beef, with Peroni Beer and a Chianti. Returned to our room for the rest of the glacial show.....for now. A small iceberg. What do you know about  glaciers  and icebergs.  I'll start with the former. A glacier is a persistent body of ice that is constantly moving downhill under its own weight.  A typical speed is around 3 feet per day, although the Greenland Jacobshavn Isbtae moves as fast as 100 feet/day.  Surges can be as fast as 300 feet/day.    Glaciers ...

Ever heard of iceberg A23a?  It calved in 1986 and is now the  largest , verified by Guinness World Records. 263 cubic miles. 40 nautical miles by 32 nautical miles space. In 2021,  iceberg A-76  broke off from the Ronne Ice Shelf off the Weddell Sea, and was larger, but soon fractured. But the absolute largest was Iceberg B-15, about the size of Jamaica.  Calved from the Ross Ice Shelf, also Antarctica, on March 2000.  There is still a small piece, B-15AB that has grounded in the western sector of Antarctica's Amery region. About A23a, it is twice the size of Greater London, UK. Detached from the  Antarctica Filchner Ice Shelf in 1986. Was for a long time stuck on the sea-floor of the Weddell Sea, but in 2013 began wandering north toward the South Georgia Island of the Southern Ocean. There are, of course, other icebergs in the Atlantic off Antarctica. Here are the  icebergs just from Greenland. The town of Ilulissat on the shores of Disko Bay in...