pressure crack

noun, a crack in ice, rock, etc. caused by tensile stress (COD); some references are to a specific notorious pressure crack — see the Crack

“The ice would heave sometimes, a pressure crack.”

“He’d always have some story when he’d come home about the pressure crack.”

“I got a picture of him in my mind, two pictures actually, sitting at the pressure crack in the ice, collecting whatever you could give him.”

“Well I drove and drove and drove for about twenty minutes, and I knew something was wrong. I was on to this big pressure crack, and I swerved to, you know, and take it head on.”

“Garden Island kind of holds the ice back on one side, and the wind’s pushing on the ice on the other side, that it always makes a crack there, pressure crack, and then sometimes the one side will be up or down from the other.”

“There used to be a pressure crack by Garden Island, and the ice would kind of mound up, and you couldn’t get by it, and he’d chop it down, put planks across, and then he’d charge you a toll.”

“They used to go straight across to Kingston in the wintertime.”
“You’d think it’d be safe enough.”
“I don’t know. There’s a lot of pressure cracks there.”