'Ice Tsunami' Smashes Houses: Why?

A viral video clip from last winter is making the rounds again, and with good reason. The clip shows a sheet of ice creepily moving across a yard and then taking aim at -- and smashing into -- a house. So what's going on here?

Strong winds blowing off Lake Mille Lacs in Onamia, Minn., pushed the ice -- in some places 3 feet thick -- in a wave that destroyed more than a dozen two-story homes.

"It basically has the same mechanism of an iceberg," Todd Borek, a CNN meteorologist, told the network. "Winds, but more so ocean currents, allow icebergs to drift. Same premise: A chunk of ice (relatively shallow) was pushed by a strong, sustained wind. The momentum of the ice sheet overcame the friction of the land."

Around the same time in Manitoba, Canada, a 9-foot-tall wall of ice destroyed half a dozen cabins and cottages.

"You know you've got cement, concrete blocks, and steel and the ice goes through it like its just a toothpick," Manitoba resident Dennis Stykalo told CBC News. "It just shows the power. There is nothing you can do, you just get out of the way and just watch."

From Discovery News