What are glaciers?

Glaciers are like huge, slow-moving ice rivers that live in cold places.

Imagine you have a big snowball, and every winter you add more snow to it. Over many years, the snow gets squeezed together until it turns into hard ice. That’s how glaciers start, they’re just really big piles of ice that keep growing bigger with each snowfall.

Glaciers don’t just sit there forever. They slowly move, like a heavy, sleepy person walking across the floor. When more snow falls on top of them, they get heavier and push forward, scraping rocks and dirt as they go. This makes the ground underneath feel like it’s being rubbed with sandpaper!

When glaciers melt, they leave behind cool patterns in the land, like when you take your ice cream out of the freezer and see little ridges on top. These ridges are called moraines, and they’re made from all the rocks and dirt that the glacier carried with it.

So next time you eat an ice cream cone, remember: you're tasting a tiny version of a glacier! 🍦