Mysterious giant ice balls discovered on Swedish coastline

Mysterious giant ice balls discovered on Swedish coastline

www.thelocal.se

Bird watchers walking along the beach on the Baltic island of Öland off Sweden’s southeastern coast were puzzled by an unusual natural phenomenon recently when they stumbled across dozens of football-sized balls of ice lying on the shore.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Hi All, Im new to ATS, very interesting topics to say the least, anyway I came across this article, what do you guys make of it?

Is it a natural phenomenon as the article suggests, has anyone seen this before? Or is it just left overs from some big dudes having a snowball fight ;-)

"According to SMHI, the ice balls likely form when rolls of light snow are blown from the shore into water which is at or just below freezing, but fails to form uniform ice due to strong winds"







www.thelocal.se
(visit the link for the full news article)

Goodness gracious, great balls of.....ICE!!

Natural formations FTW.

Sweedish meatballs are taking over?

Come on, everyone else was thinking it too.

im goin to shoot my theory on the formation of the balls.

I think that they started out as odd shaped chunks of ice, as they floated near shore or shallow water. Where they could touch the bottom, getting slosh back and forth and rubbing against one another. [Like one of thoes rock polishers that tumble the rocks to smooth them like balls of rock], as the tide waves moved in and out from the shore. Forming balls of ice!?!

[edit on 5am1 30 200 by goddogo1]

reply to post by zippy70


Hi,

Welcome to ATS!

Many thanks for this link - I always find the discovery of 'new' natural phenomena interesting. Just when we think we have seen everything... :-)

Incidentally, I read 'the Local.de'

S&F

Peace

The Sweedish are once again famous for their balls .

The theory behind the formation of these is incredible.

Will they sell them in IKEA?

Flag

This "Does" remind me of swedish meatballs !

Has anyone checked the centers ?

Also reminds me of a SNL Christmas skit !

Something that happens to white water canoeists when they come down a drop is that they get caught in a vertically circulating bit of water - they are forced under and spin and spin till they either drown or somehow get them selves out.

Now what with the buoyancy and the mass that's quite a force.

I would say there is some waterfall near there that had floating chunks of ice fall over... They were trapped in the plunge pool, spun till spherical and spat out.

edit: oh hang on - soft snow core? No my explanation wont work on that - I should read better

[edit on 5/1/2010 by Now_Then]

Very cool. Can they use these balls to finally quash Finland?

two lines

I think sweden actually is a humongous ikea flatpack and those are polystyrene balls to protect its goods.

Why hasn't Phage weighed in on this yet?

Paging Dr Phage...