A giant wall of ice has drifted to the shores of Canadian island, Newfoundland, prompting a whole sea of responses on Twitter.
This area is known for iceberg chasing, a phenomenon where tourists try in to see the beasts up close whenever they pop up along “Iceberg Alley”, the stretch of the water next to the eastern coast of the province, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Around 90% of icebergs are all old parts of Greenland’s glaciers while the rest come from Canada’s Arctic. They break off the larger ice sheets when temperatures rise in the summer, although the behemoths normally only last a few months.
It’s a yearly phenomenon, and the glacial masses can be seen from around the coast on clear days. They can range in colours too, being both snow-white and aquamarine, according to the province’s official website.
The icebergs can also be enormous – the largest one ever recorded was found in 2021, at 135km in length and 25km in width and it moved towards South Georgia.
However, it’s thought that these visiting icebergs are becoming more common now because of the climate crisis and the overall threat to the Earth’s ice caps.
A 2019 study from the US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found Greenland’s glaciers are melting four times faster than previously estimated.
But, on July 21 this year, the US Coast Guard and International Ice Patrol (an organisation which was set up after an iceberg sank the Titanic in 1912) estimated that there are 2,065 icebergs north of the Labrador region all in open water.
Although that sounds like a lot, that’s actually “mostly below normal in the region”, according to the experts who compare this year’s data to the last few decades, and concluded only 380 of these icebergs expected to drift further south.
Still – that doesn’t stop the arrival of the latest enormous one on Newfoundland’s doorstep from shocking the internet.
Here’s a look at some of the best reactions to one of nature’s most bizarre feats: