Mystery From Above In Brooklyn As Chunks Of Ice Fall From The Sky

reply to post by Zaphod58


But toilet waste from planes is colored blue?

Blue ice in the context of aviation is the frozen sewage material dispensed mid-flight from commercial aircraft lavatory waste tanks, a biowaste mixture of human waste and liquid disinfectant that freezes at high altitude

reply to post by PhoenixOD


The water in the waste system is, but depending on aircraft type you can have a couple hundred gallons of clear water as well.

There's another theory about ice (water) meteors hitting Earth every day... well, they do, but the argument is how many-how much. Some might get through the burn and plop down.

Then there's the fact that reports of odds and ends falling out of the sky is an old, known happening that defies most theories as the proposed tornado is weirdly selective... as in famous fish falls, blood stuff, etc. see Charles Fort and William Corliss.

reply to post by Neysa


Just some soft ball sized hail.

No joke I had a dream Thursday night of chunks of ice falling during a Baltimore ravens game and a huge one crushed one of the defensive ends.

I am prone to agree though that this is most likely from an aircraft. But I would think the chunk of ice that formed on a wing or something would be shaped differently. Or melt before it hit the ground or be less dense. Unless like some have said it was a leak of one of the clear water tanks. Alas we may never know.

reply to post by davethebear


Fridge ice is iceberg blue - my last freezer didn't have an auto-defrost, so we hacked out a 30cm x 30cm x 4cm block. Really hard to remove - sharp as razor blades.

Summer time hail is no strange phenomena. Happened here in VA in 2008. But since its only one chunk of ice, that leads me to think it was a small build up of water in the upper atmosphere (which is considerably colder) and this particular build up of water was condensed creating a ball of ice that a "cloud" could no longer hold. I don't see how this could come from an aircraft unless someone deliberately threw it out. (I fly in helicopters and I throw # out all the time but nothing that could put my crew in jeapordy of a serious flight violation.)

reply to post by PhoenixOD


Aircraft have de-ice systems installed o. Their wings or blades. Flight crews would have commenced a "land as soon as possible" emergency procedure before that much ice built up. Or at least descended to a lower altitude.

reply to post by qiwi27


You'd be surprised. A number of aircraft have crashed from icing because the ice formed behind the deicing boots, or it formed as clear ice and they didn't know it was happening. American Eagle 4184 was the first time they could confirm that rain would hit the leading edge of the wing, roll back onto the back portion of the wing and then freeze. That crash they actually ripped the tail off the aircraft trying to recover.

If this is from an aircraft it's from a galley system that was leaking out through one of the vents. It happens. You don't catch it on the ground because the system isn't in use, so it doesn't usually drip unless it's a bad leak.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Fair enough. I'm not as well equipped in fixed wing knowledge as I am rotary wing obviously. And since we don't fly over 10,000 feet (hardly ever go above 3k), I don't have enough experience to say what happens. I just feel like they would get indications before the icing got that bad. That is a huge piece of ice to form on a wing. Now if it was from a leak (by the way I'm not sure what a galley system is if you could help me out with that) then I can see how that makes sense. If it is toilet water... Gross

reply to post by qiwi27


After 4184 changes were made, even though that crash was ATR specific. Depending on where the icing is, you will get a warning, but there are certain conditions that you won't. Air France 447 is another one that was caused by icing, although in that case it was super cold rain that didn't freeze until it hit the aircraft. It froze the pitot tubes causing a loss of air data that the crew didn't recognize, and they stalled and fell into the Atlantic.

This is from one of the potable water tanks if it's from an aircraft. If it was from the lavatory then it would be blue.