A History of Ice Falls

Mysterious ice falls have been reported in many parts of the world for centuries – many before the invention of flying machines. Here are some of the most extraordinary examples of documented ice falls:

In the late 1700s, a gargantuan chuck of ice “as big as an elephant” was said to fall on Seringapatam, India, and took three days to melt.

In 1802, a lump of ice fell from the sky on Hungary that had a volume of 18 cubic feet!

In 1849, a block of ice that was estimated to weigh a half a ton fell on the Balvullich farm in Ord, Scotland. It measured about 20 feet in diameter and was reported to be crystal clear, although apparently made up of many cubes and diamond-shaped hunks of ice fused together.

Another ice fall took place in Scotland in December of 1950. A man driving near the town of Dumbarton was nearly struck by a rain of ice that crashed down onto the road. A subsequent police investigation weighed the collected ice at 112 pounds.

Several other reports of ice falls were recorded in Great Britain in 1950 and 1951.

A carpenter working on a roof in Kempton, West Germany in 1951 was struck and killed by a 6-foot long, 6-inch around rod of solid ice.

Farmer Edwin Groff of Bernville, Pennsylvania was witness to a 50-pound, white globe of ice that whooshed through the sky and crashed on his property in 1957. A few seconds later, a second ball of ice, half the size of the first, smashed into his flower bed, just a few yards from where he was standing.

On September 2, 1958, Dominick Bacigalupo was knocked from his feet when a 70-pound ball of ice tore through his roof and attic and broke into three pieces on his kitchen floor.

The roof of the Phillips Petroleum Plant in Woods Cross, Utah was punctured by a 50-pound block of ice in 1965.

One well-documented ice fall was actually witnessed by a British meteorologist in 1973. While standing on a street corner in Manchester, R.F. Griffiths saw a huge chunk of ice smash to pieces on the road just 10 feet away. The largest piece, which he recovered, weighed 3-1/2 pounds.

A football-sized chunk of ice landed in a garden near Lake Vattern, Sweden in 1990. It was described as being somewhat milky in appearance, dotted with bits of debris colored gray, brown, and lilac.

A year later, in October 1991, a 20-pound mass of ice smashed through the roof of the home of Mrs. Mavis Anderson in West Yorkshire, England, landing in her kitchen.

In 1992, a sphere of yellow-tinged ice crashed through the roof of a factory in Salihli, Turkey. Witnesses said the ice released the odor of rotting fruit as it melted. This sounds like a candidate for airplane waste, but officials determined there were no planes flying in the area at the time.

Possible Explanations

There are four possible, but not equally plausible, explanations for these puzzling ice falls:

Airplane ice. Undoubtedly, some small pieces of ice must fall from the wings of airplanes. Today’s aircraft, however, have heating devices that de-ice the wings before any significant buildup can occur. Certainly, chunks of ice of the size that have been reported are highly unlikely. As mentioned above, analysis of recovered ice has also ruled out the possibility of ejected waste from airplanes.

Weird weather. Hail is a relatively uncommon weather event, and large hailstones are rarer still. The largest hailstones recorded have been about 5 inches in diameter with a maximum weight of about 2 pounds. Such large hailstones can only be formed in violent thunderstorms. An updraft of 90 mph or stronger is needed to create a hailstone the size of a baseball. The problem with this explanation for the incidents cited above is that usually just one or two large chunks of ice fall from the sky, and there is no report of a storm of any kind. In fact, many ice falls seem to come from a clear and cloudless sky.

Comets. Comets are composed of ice and dust and it’s theoretically possible that small comets could enter the Earth’s atmosphere and strike the Earth before exploding or completely melting. Professor Martinez, investigating the falls in Spain, said that they were too scattered and infrequent to be pieces of comet tails. Also, he said, they should have been large enough when entering the Earth’s atmosphere to register on radar screens, which they didn’t.

UFOs. Inevitably, somebody in the UFO community suggests that extraterrestrial craft are somehow responsible. Are they suggesting that space-trekking vehicles do not have as sophisticated de-icing devices as our aircraft do? Or that the ice was discarded from the flying saucers after some wild, onboard Pleidian party? Or, as Italian UFOlogist Eufemio Del Buono stated in reference to the ice falls in his country, are they “a warning from extraterrestrial intelligences”?

The fact is, no one knows for certain where this ice comes from or how it is formed. For now, it is just one more Earth mystery.

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