The cold facts about Russian wartime activity in the fields of ice and snow were thoroughly warming to one man: Meteorologist James E. Church, president of the International Commission of Snows & Glaciers. He reported:
The Soviet Institute of Frozen Ground, which has prepared an atlas of frozen-ground areas throughout the world, had built up a wartime ice cover on the Moscow reservoir so thick that ordinary bombs could not damage it. A top dressing of evergreen branches kept the ice from melting until midsummer.
The Red Army's Snow Institute for Flyers perfected a method of packing snow cover, more than...