Alaska & Nebraska

Alaska and Nebraska have more in common than rhyming state names, they share words to describe occurrences or things in their respective states. But, in some instances, the shared words have very different meanings. In Alaska, the term “calving” describes the sudden breaking away of massive chunks of ice from the edge of a glacier. Obviously, the term has a very different meaning in Nebraska. The term “canal” in Alaska denotes an open channel linking a fjord to the ocean, not a ditch carrying irrigation water to fields. But the two states share a migratory bird species. Sandhill cranes, the same ones who stop in Nebraska during migration, will summer in Alaska.