FT263

Charles Fort wrote about many types of substances, objects and animals falling from the sky. He suggested (with tongue planted firmly in cheek) that they fell from floating sky islands. One of the main types of fall he wrote about was chunks of ice plummeting from a clear sky. [1]

Fort’s cases all came from the pre-aircraft days of the 19th century. Modern ice falls are routinely explained away as leaks from plane holding tanks. Blue chunks that smell of chemicals, or greenish-yellow pieces that smell of urine (not to mention rarer cases of brown pieces smelling of something even worse) certainly originate in this way.

Falls of clear and pure ice are harder to explain. Some may be from water that has frozen on the outside of an aircraft then fallen off at a lower altitude.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) launched an investigation into a chunk of ice that damaged the roof of a house on 4 November 2009. The house is about 16km from Runway 28 at O’Hare International Airport, and lies under one of the airport’s flight paths. Paul Dowd and his family heard a bang shortly before 8pm and ran outside to find fragments of a large ice chunk that had struck their roof. The FAA were investigating the possibility that accumulated structural ice, which can gather on surfaces and around gears, struts and tail sections of aircraft, had fallen off as a plane descended into warmer air. [2]

On average, there are about two ice chunk falls each month, worldwide. Curiously, there were three falls of clear ice over the USA in a short two-week period in March 2008.

About 6.15am on 3 March, a hand-sized piece crashed through the roof of a Gastonia, North Carolina, family home. An aircraft was blamed. [3] On 6 March, a basketball-sized chunk smashed through the tin roof of Welch’s Tire Shop in Lula, Georgia, and shattered into baseball-sized pieces. FAA spokesperson Kathleen Bergen said it was regarded as “very, very rare”. She mentioned that a 2007 Tampa, Florida, case of white ice smashing a car had been narrowed down to either ice stuck in a plane’s wheel well or a failed heating tube that caused ice to form on the back of an aircraft. [4]

Lastly, on 14 March, a hole was smashed in the roof of Weber Marking Systems in Arlington Heights, Illinois, by several ice chunks. This time, the FAA said: “We are still unsure if this came from an aircraft. We are looking at aircraft over the area at that time trying to determine if it’s a leak. This is an extremely rare event.” (!) [5]

Britain has also been an ice chunk target. During the very hot early August of 2008, a property in Vesper Gate Mount, Leeds, was pummelled by ice pieces. Harry Pollard, 80, a retired heating engineer, said: “It was about lunchtime last Sunday and I had just sat down. Suddenly, my washing line seemed to be blowing all over the place and I thought a bird had got trapped in it. But then I saw a piece of ice had hit it and it also seemed to have struck the bird feeder, which was moving about. One piece of ice was buried in the ground and the rest was spread around the garden. It was about the size of a brick… It took two-and-a-half hours for it to melt in the baking heat.” [6]


NEAR MISSES
Nearly every case of an ice fall involves a near miss on a witness. A direct hit would most likely be fatal. In October 2008, Mary Ann Foster, 66, of York Township, Pennsylvania, was lucky that the roof above her took the initial impact of an ice chunk about 46cm long and weighing at least 2.7kg. It left a 46 x 61cm hole in the bedroom ceiling and showered the bed she had been sleeping in with ice pieces. Mrs Foster escaped with a bump on her head: “I’m just glad I’m alive, to tell you the truth. I guess it wasn’t my time. If a bigger piece hit me, I’d probably be in trouble.” [7]

A group of friends were drinking outside the Kilton Inn in Worksop on the evening of 9 August 2009 when they heard a loud smash. Wesley Chesters, who lives nearby, was narrowly missed by the 30cm square chunk.

Dawn Rennie, another Worksop resident, added: “We were just so lucky. We were so close to being killed when we were just sitting outside a pub quietly. Things like this just should not happen. Aeroplanes shouldn’t be ejecting things over Eastgate.”

A frozen condom was embedded in one of the blocks – proof it had fallen from a plane. A spokesman from the CAA said: “leaks from toilet systems can occur if there is a fault on the seal at the point where the hose from the collection vehicle connects with the aircraft… When ice falls are reported to the CAA, we attempt to ident­ify aircraft which may have been responsible, and request its operator examine mainten­ance records to attempt to identify possible causes and repair any faulty seals.” [8]

In mid-December 2008, a huge 36kg chunk snapped rafters like match-sticks and left a 90cm hole in the roof of Lupe Murillo’s Pico Rivera home. The ice was thought to have come from an aircraft, as the house is under the flight path for Los Angeles International Airport. Murillo commented that the crash “sounded like an airplane had fallen through the roof”. [9]

Back in Britain, there were more falls at the start of 2009.

About 11pm on 15 January, retired engineer Paul Thomas, 66, heard a loud thud and thought a car had crashed.

“When I went outside, I saw that a lump of ice had spread about 10 yards on impact. It was a well-made chunk, with a beautiful curve, as though it had come off a wing of a plane. If anyone had been standing underneath it they would have been killed.” [10]

According to a newspaper columnist, there were two other ice falls in mid-January: “On Monday, a house in New Malden, Surrey, was hit by a large ice block that made a 6ft hole in the roof. One neighbour described the sound of the crash ‘like a field gun being fired’, and another witness thought that a gas boiler had exploded. Huge chunks of ice were left scatt­ered over the roof. And on Tuesday a woman in Guernsey heard the sound of ice chunks crashing into her greenhouse when she herself was struck by a piece of ice. Large shards of ice about 2in thick, and smooth on one side, were found strewn on the ground. These were nothing like hailstones.” [11]

The falls continued in February. Mark Brotherton, 33, of Frogmore Lane, Horndean, initially thought vandals had smashed his car windscreen one morning – until he found a green, smelly chunk of ice on the bonnet and another lump 3–6m away. The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) gave a cool response to his complaint. He was told it would be investigated, but it was up to him to prove who was liable for the damage!

“I just feel it shouldn’t be my responsibility to chase an airline if they [the CAA] are the governing body,” Mr Brotherton said. [12]

The article included some interesting facts: around 16 per cent of all inbound traffic to the UK passes over the Portsmouth area and the latest fall was in the same 8km radius where a spate of ice balls caused extensive damage in 2004 and 2005. About 30 cases are reported every year to the CAA – but, according to a spokesman, “It’s actually quite rare.” Yeah, right. We’ve heard that before.


ICE DISCS AND METEORITES
There are two unusual cases of falling ice discs – both on golf courses. In 1979, WGM Goodwin wrote a letter to his local newspaper about a strange experience he had while playing golf at Heretaunga, Upper Hutt, New Zealand.

“I was walking towards the 12th green when I noticed what looked like a whitish circular disc descending in a slow spiral course from a height of about 100ft. It landed about 30–40 yards away and my initial reaction was that it was one of those plastic discs that child­ren send into the air from a string-operated spindle. Since there was nobody in sight apart from some fellow golfers over 100 yards away I became even more curious. The said object turned out to be an irregular-shaped disc of hailstones frozen into a conglomerate about 12in average diameter and 1½in thick. The upper surface showed vividly the hailstone pattern while the lower surface was almost smooth – no doubt due to friction with the air as it descended. Needless to say, the person I was playing golf with was equally fascinated as we each held it in our hands.” [13]

A remarkably similar case happened in 2005. According to the Associated Press, four players at the Heisei Club golf course in Saitama, just outside Tokyo, heard a loud thud and found a disc-shaped hunk of ice – about 50cm in diameter and 15cm thick – broken into several pieces. It weighed 2kg. There is no airport in Saitama, and the golf course involved was not beneath a flight route. [14]

I personally investigated a puzzling repeater case in New Zealand a few years ago. Sometime between 3.30 and 4pm on 13 January 2004, Pat Theobald was showered with water when a chunk of ice hit the parapet on the corner of her two-storey house in Meadowbank, Auckland.

“I’ve got a reasonably high – about 2m – stone wall around my property. Some pieces went over it, onto the other side. I went over to Jan [Jan and Bruce Robertson were her neighbours] and asked her to have a look at the pieces,” she said. [15]

At 5pm on 21 January, it was 80-year-old Jan Robertson’s turn to be shocked by an ice chunk that smashed three tiles in the kitchen roof of her home. According to the Civil Aviation Authority, there were possibly some traces of chlorine in the ice.

“We understand there were two flights over the area at the time and it’s possible a leak in an aircraft water pipe caused the block,” stated Bill Sommer, a CAA spokesman. Both aircraft were inspected, but there were no indication the ice had come from either of them. [16]

Jan added the information that the ice “probably had specks of the roof in it, but it was not blue coloured, just ordinary ice. No, no smell with it.” [17]

The high wall around Pat Theobald’s property, plus the fact that the ice fell down onto the corner of her two-storey house, would seem to rule out pranksters – unless they had a very strong lightweight catapult. It would be an extra­ordinary coincidence for two separate falls from aircraft to land only 20–30m away from each other on adjoining prop­erties a full eight days apart. That leaves two possible explanations – ice meteorite fragments from outer space or singular gigantic hailstones forming somehow in clear weather conditions.


TERRESTRIAL OR EXTRATERRESTRIAL?
In 2006, Martin Beech wrote a technical paper that examined the ice meteorite theory. He concluded that it was just poss­ible, but likely to be a very rare event:

“If the encounter velocity is not much greater than the Earth’s escape velocity then a 5–10m diameter ice-meteoroid might just produce a 1–10kg ice-meteorite at the Earth’s surface.” [18]

Beech considered the mega­cryometeor theory (noting that the meteor part of the name refers to meteorology, not meteorites) of Jesus Martinez-Frias to be the most likely explanation for clear weather ice chunk falls.

Martinez-Frias founded the International Working Group Fall of Blocks of Ice (IWGFBI) to investigate cases of mega­cryometeors after a 10-day period in January 2000 when dozens of ice chunks fell from cloudless skies over Spain. [19]

His team ruled out leaks from planes as the ice had no traces of disinfectant or urine. They were not from space, as lab tests showed the megacryo­meteors had the chemical signature of ordinary terrestrial hailstones. Somehow, giant hailstones had formed in clear, cloudless skies. One possibility was that ice crystals from aircraft contrails were kept afloat at high altitudes by strong, freezing winds for long periods and gradually built up into single, gigantic hailstones.

“I’m not worried that a block of ice may fall on your head,” said Martinez-Frias, “I’m worr­ied that great blocks of ice are forming where they shouldn’t exist.” [20]

“I don’t like to claim that anything is impossible, but this comes awfully close,” says Charles Knight, a hail expert at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. [21]

At least one recent American case appears to have had a more terrestrial origin, and the same explanation has been given for a famous historical fall. The 11 February Portsmouth, Oregon, police log states “3:19 p.m. – Middle Street caller reported a chunk of ice fell on a parked car, smashing the windshield.” [22]

In answer to my email inquiry, I was told that the “Portsmouth Police were dispatched to Middle Street at 15.19 hours on 2/11/09 for a report of ice that had fallen on a parked car. This was determ­ined to be a civil issue and no police report was filed.” [23] In short, somebody threw it.

According to Mike Lyons (WPBF TV’s weather specialist) a remarkable 4kg hailstone that fell in Waco, Texas back in the 1930s and made it into Ripley’s Believe It or Not! had a similar origin. Apparently, a travelling salesman had been using a large block of ice to keep his drinks cool.

“A squall line of thunderstorms was approaching the city… This was one whopper of a storm. Soon, the pea-sized hail morphed into quarter-sized stones of ice along with a few hailstones appreciably larger. Folks who had sought shelter from the storm under the hotel’s awning began gathering the hailstones marvelling at their size. Now on his second cocktail, the travelling salesman decided to have a little fun with the locals. He rounded the remainder of the block of ice under the hot water faucet and threw the 9lb chunk out his hotel window.” [24]

Regardless of whatever causes them, falls of ice chunks are remarkable fortean events. On hot, summer days it pays to play safe and keep one eye on the sky.



Thanks to Mike Frizzel for some of the above reports.  



Notes
1 Charles Fort: The Book of the Damned, John Brown, 1995, pp174–180 (chapter 13 for those with different editions).
2 “FAA tracking planes that flew over house hit by ice”, Chicago Breaking News, 5 Nov 2009.
3 WBTV (Gastonia, North Carolina).
4 Gainesville (Georgia) Times, 7 Mar 2008.
5 D.Herald (Arlington Heights, Illinois), 15 Mar 2008.
6 “Leeds ice mystery during summer heatwave”, Yorkshire Eve. Post, 4 Aug 2008.
7 “Icy awakening for York Township woman”, York (Pennsylvania) Dispatch, 9 Oct 2008.
8 “Block of ice could easily have killed us”, Worksop Guardian, 14 Aug 2009.
9 "80 pound ice block crashes into home", KTLA news, 19 Dec 2008.
10 “Aircraft ice crash-lands close to Shirley houses”, Croydon Advertiser/The Post, 19 Jan 2009.
11 “Falling ‘aircraft ice’ tears hole in New Malden roof” Surrey Comet, 21 Jan; and Paul Simons: “Weather Eye” column, The Times, 23 Jan 2009.
12 “Watch out – ice balls are about”, The News (Portsmouth), 20 Feb 2009.
13 “Hailstone discs” (letter to the editor), Evening Post (Wellington, New Zealand), 15 Jan 1979.
14 “Ice chunk Falls In Japan”, [AP] 21 Dec 2005.
15 Telephone interview with Peter Hassall, 25 Jan 2005.
16 “Scientists puzzle over ice from sky”, New Zealand Herald, 31 Jan 2004.
17 Telephone interview with Peter Hassall, 23 Jan 2005.
18 Beech, Martin: “The Problem of Ice Meteorites”, Meteorite Quarterly, Nov 2006, 12(4), pp17–19.
19 FT132:6, 133:66, 140:66. See also FT214:25.
20 “Scientists puzzle over ice from sky”, New Zealand Herald, 31 Jan 2004.
21 Ibid.
22 Portsmouth police log.
23 Email reply from Nicole Perl (Office Manager, Records Division, Portsmouth Police Department), 4 Mar 2009.
24 Mike Lyons: “Huge ice chunk can’t top Waco whopper of 1930s”, Palm Beach Daily News, 25 Oct 2008.



Further reading
Megacryometeors
Megacryometeors: Extreme atmospheric events
Damn Interesting: The peculiar phenomenon of megacryometers 
Weather Questions: What causes megacryometers?
Beech, Martin: “The Problem of Ice Meteorites”, Meteorite Quarterly, Nov 2006, 12(4), pp17–19.
Martinez-Frias, Jesus, and Huertas, Antonio Delgado: "Megacryometeors: Distribution on Earth and Current Research", Ambio, Sep 2006, 35(6)pp314-316.