the annual thrusting forward and expansion of river ice during break-up, with special reference to the St. Lawrence River, where the phenomenon was accompanied with much flooding and considerable danger.
1898  The winter ice floods on the St. Lawrence are distinguished from those produced in other rivers more to the south, in that the latter are the direct result of thaw and rain . . . whereas those of the St. Lawrence occur when there is the least water in the river as well as less ice than at a later period of the winter.