In September, 1939, at the International Assembly just subsequent to the termination of the iceberg‐season of 1939, a paper was given on icebergs, and their drift into the North Atlantic. The Coast Guard cutter Chelan, which I commanded, drifted with the last iceberg in the North Atlantic steamship‐lanes, and witnessed its complete disintegration, then no longer a danger to shipping, on August 23, 1939.It so happens that as this is being written, the first Arctic ice of the crop of 1940 has just been sighted. On April 3, 1940, in latitude 48° 40′ north, longitude 50° 10′ west, a steamship sighted strings of pack‐ice—the vanguard of the procession which is now drifting southward with the wind and current. The United States Coast Guard since the middle of March has kept two cutters in readiness at Boston, Massachusetts, expecting under normal conditions that the first of the Arctic ice would put in an appearance off the Grand Banks about the first of March. This year, therefore, the ice is a month or more late and to date no icebergs have appeared. This is in marked contrast to last year when an area of pack‐ice as extensive as New England covered the ocean off Newfoundland and many icebergs were drifting in the Labrador Current. There is a high correlation between pack‐ice and icebergs. During 1939 there were 850 bergs that drifted south of Newfoundland. It ranked as a heavy ice‐year along with 1909, 1912, 1929, and 1935, when 1024, 1019, 1351, and 875 bergs, respectively, were recorded. On the other hand, 1902, 1924, and 1931 produced only 41, 11, and 13 bergs, respectively. Such wide variations, although partially explained by variations in meteorological conditions in the northwestern North Atlantic and Arctic, do not tell the whole story.