sastrugan.

1840 E. J. Sabine tr. F. P. Wrangell Narr. Exped. Polar Sea vii. 146 We were guided by the wave-like stripes of snow (sastrugi) which are formed, either on the plains on land or on the level ice of the sea, by any wind of long continuance.

1840 E. J. Sabine tr. F. P. Wrangell Narr. Exped. Polar Sea vii. 147 It often happens that the true permanent sastruga has been obliterated by another produced by temporary winds.

1878 E. L. Moss Shores Polar Sea vi. 42 The sloping shore hills are barred with ‘sastrugi’—wind-made ridges of snow—but the abrupt scooped-out rifts between them are smothered over with fleecy powder in gentle undulations.

1900 Rep. Brit. Assoc. 817 The wind concentrating along the lines of the re-entrants, the general level of the surface here is lowered more quickly by abrasion than is the case along the intermediate lines of the salient angles. Thus is produced a well-marked form transitional between snow ripples and sastrugi.

1911 R. F. Scott Jrnl. in Last Exped. (1913) I. 517 The hard surface gave place to regular sastrugi.

1921 H. G. Ponting Great White South 94 The going was easy enough, except when periodically we encountered heavy sastrugi.

1937 Geogr. Jrnl. 89 195 He remarks on sastrugi 6 inches high, then for three days very few.

1960 Times 17 Feb. 10/3 Much of the traverse was conducted over a difficult surface rippled with sastrugi.

1975 E. Hillary Nothing venture, Nothing Win xiii. 243 The surface, which had appeared so smooth from above, was..liberally peppered with large sastrugi—some of them up to three feet in height.

1979 R. Fiennes Hell on Ice v. 70 The sastruga ripples we encountered along the summit ridges.

1982 B. W. Aldiss Helliconia Spring ii. 89 Only Yuli had experience of the tundras and zastrugi, which stretched away to the north of the Quzint.