Hi Keith

I’ld go.

Some guesswork on bergs: The tall ones, that calve off thick glaciers which end at the sea, won’t have significant flat surfaces to begin with and will probably roll over relatively frequently. The bergs that form when ice shelves break up are more raft-like, at least initially. They will need to break into much smaller pieces before losing stability and beginning to roll. Any bergs that make it to Dunedin will be these ice shelf bergs, but they could easily be non-tabular and regular rollers by the time they get here.

I’m not sure how often we will have bergs reaching us – it was a massive break off that eventually produced the small chunks that reached us in 2006, 11,000 sq kms (bigger than the one you mention Keith?), and it took 4 years for it to break up and have bits reach us.

The ice will be fresh water – to produce significant ice shelf thickness, massive amounts of snow has to compress on top of any sea-ice. I am quite prepared to believe that any ice that reaches us will be hard and smooth by the time it gets here. As you say Keith – the action of wind, rain, melt and refreeze will have removed any poorly compressed snow long ago and smoothed it off.

But it will still be a crap-shoot as to whether any berg that makes it this far will present a big enough flat surface. And I think the chances of another berg visit might be small. (NIWA says bergs were last seen off the NZ mainland, also from Dunedin, in 1931.) Happy to be proved wrong though, and maybe things are warming up.

Wiki says the “US National Ice Centre” tracks any Antarctic berg longer than 20km. Someone with a faster connection than me could see if they will tell us of any possible visit candidates.

Hi Graham

Dave P, Steph and Nick are all happy to see their names on the list. Thanks and see you on Wednesday.

Dave.