"in the longer term it will probably be detrimental to the ice pack" I thought that ridging of the sea ice was a pretty important method by which thicker sea-ice was created. I would have thought that the winds from the storm would cause quite a lot of extra ridging, with the open areas in the ice pack created as a result freezing over pretty rapidly. So a succession of winter storms could help to create a thicker ice pack. Maybe? It's sort of the flip-side to the argument that snowfall would insulate the ice pack, and slow down the thickening of the sea-ice. The open areas created by the storm will create ice more quickly (by losing heat more quickly) than a normal patch of sea-ice would, so the Arctic-wide volume of sea-ice would increase more quickly.