Katabatic winds race down ice sheets faster than highway traffic
Cold, dense air forms over high ice plateaus, then spills downhill under gravity — katabatic winds that can roar past 100 km/h across Antarctica and Greenland.
The flow accelerates in coastal valleys, lofting snow into whiteouts and carving sastrugi ripples in the surface. Stations near outlet glaciers feel these drainage winds almost like permanent weather machines.
Ice makes its own weather. Katabatic blasts prove polar extremes are not only low temperatures — they are dense air pouring off the cryosphere like an invisible river.
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