Nature&39;s Gigantic Snow Plough On January 10,
1962, an enormous piece of glacierbroke away and tumbled down the side of amountain in Peru. A mere seven minutes later, whencascading ice finally came to a stop ten miles downthe mountain, it had taken the lives of 4,000 people.
This disaster is one of the most“devastating”examples of a very common event: an avalanche of snow or ice. Because it isextremely cold at very high altitudes, snow rarely melts. It just keeps piling up higher andhigher. Glaciers are eventually created when the weight of the snow is so great that the lowerlayers are pressed into solid ice. But most avalanches occur long before this happens. As snowaccumulates on a steep slope, it reaches a critical point at which the slightest vibration willsend it sliding into the valley below. Even an avalanche of light power can be dangerous, but the Peruvian catastrophe wasparticularly terrible because it was caused by a heavy layer of ice. It is estimated that the icethat broke off weighed three million tons. As it crashed down the steep mountainside like agigantic snow plough, it swept up trees, boulders and tons of topsoil, and completely crushedand destroyed the six villages that lay in its path.
At present there is no way to predict or avoid such enormous avalanches, but, luckily, theyare very rare. Scientists are constantly studying the smaller, more common avalanches, to tryto understand what causes them. In the future, perhaps dangerous masses of snow and icecan be found and removed before they take human lives.?
The first paragraph catches the reader&39;s attention with a ?_____
A. first hand report
B. dramatic description
C. tall tale
D. vivid world picture