Dzud

This is a new word I learned today. A rather sad word.

According to Wikipedia, a dzud is "a Mongolian term for an extremely snowy winter in which livestock are unable to find fodder through the snow cover, and large numbers of animals die due to starvation and the cold".

In a recent dzud in Mongolia where temperatures dropped to as low as -50C, millions of animals died. The first picture below shows some dead sheep. The second shows a dog that never made it to the nomadic ger homes that were only a few steps away. The third picture shows a memorial monument for a horse, put up by its Mongolian owners.

This might well have been another "worst in a hundred years" dzud.