Meltwater produced by melting ice has the potential to carry the products of glaciation far into the proglacial zone. Kettles and other features are the result.
KAMES and KAME TERRACES: found on the sides of the Vale of Pickering in North Yorkshire, which used to be a proglacial lake, with the ice in the North Sea blocking the drainage of rivers flowing eastwards from the Pennines. This created proglacial lakes which included one which occupied the area that is now the Fens.
Sandur / Sandar - outwash plain - most famous examples are found in Iceland: Sprengisandur etc. Huge areas of East Anglia are also covered with outwash, south of the Cromer Ridge which was deposited by the Devensian glacial.
Glacial Kettles are another feature. I have a report of one which collapsed in March 2001 in Thorpe St. Andrew, Norwich, sending a man's garden into a 40 foot deep hole which took away the hedge and garden furniture.
Remember that when glaciers begin to melt, as a result of a process called DEGLACIATION there will be large volumes of meltwater produced.
A recent (January 2003) report on the BBC site referred to NEPAL as facing a glacier 'catastrophe'. The report featured the IMJA Glacier lake in Eastern Nepal. There is a lake near the glacier which is 6km above sea level, 1km long and 100m deep. 25 years earlier it was a glacier. The lake is held in place by a wall of frozen rock, a terminal moraine which threatens to give way and send a wall of water down the valley below the glacier because the ice is thawing. The valley below the glacier is densely populated with the local Sherpa population.
Pipkrake / Pipkraker: 'needle ice' which forms in capillaries in the soil. Found below by Stanage Edge, Derbyshire in mid January 1990 something and photographed by Mister P. Click the image of the artist's hand to enlarge...
See below for an excellent picture of an Esker near Dundee at a place called Bridge of Cally, North of Blairgowrie.
The esker is being slowly removed, as the feature is made of sands and gravels. This is often the fate of eskers, and in some areas they have had to be given special protection. The materials are used for construction as they are ideally sized, and all in one convenient place.
Bridge of Cally Esker. Picture by Val Vannet.
This esker is being removed faster as we move into 2006
Another few useful images below, added April 2005 - thanks to Val Vannet
