Canie, I emailed an earthquake seismologist an hour ago to ask if this was of interest, and discussed it with another seismologist the other day. My gut feeling is that the processes in ice and in rock are similar, in this case. The question is whether the ice pattern is something that would happen on a small scale in the propagation of an earthquake rupture, or is it similar to the en-echelon patterns that we do see in maps of large faults (North Anatolia fault in Izmit Bay, Newport Inglewood fault, Santa Monica fault.....Chris