retreating because the climate has warmed, the river of ice may still be flowing forward (if enough snow is falling upstream).

When glaciation advanced over New England, it eventually reached a latitude beyond which it could not push because the southern climate was too warm. As fast as the ice could flow forward, the warmer climate melted it back. This equilibrium between advancing and melting was maintained for some time, perhaps 5000 years. The melting ice at the glacier's front was full of scraps of rock, sand, and clay picked up in the north and carried south. As the ice melted, these scraps were dumped on the ground in front of the glacier. In effect, the halted glacier acted as a giant dirt machine, spitting out ground-up bedrock. As a result, a very large pile of debris known as a terminal moraine built up at the glacier's edge. The warming climate eventually proved to be more than the river of ice could keep pace with, and the glacier was forced to retreat. The terminal moraine was left behind as a mark of the maximum advance of glaciation in the Northeast. Part of that terminal moraine is what we know today as Long Island, Fishers Island, Block Island, Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and Cape Cod.

Terminal moraines stretch all across interior North America. But in the Northeast the advancing sea has flooded the moraine, leaving it as a long series of islands and peninsulas. Long Island and Fishers Island are only part of a much larger feature that runs ashore and forms the coast of Rhode Island and eventually connects with Cape Cod. Actually, Long Island is composed of two parallel moraines marking two close-by standstills of the glacial dirt machine. Toward the east, the two moraines diverge and form Long Island's North Fork and South Fork. The North Fork connects with Fishers Island, coastal Rhode Island, and Cape Cod; the South Fork runs mostly undersea to Block Island, Martha's Vine-yard, and Nantucket.

Together, Long Island and Fishers Island form a huge natural breakwater that protects the entire coastline of Connecticut, creating the branch of the sea known as Long Island Sound. The affairs of nature are calmer in this sheltered stretch of water - storms are less severe and wave heights are not as great. Due to regional weather patterns, Long Island receives most major storms before Connecticut does. The full brunt

82