If anything odd happens to the weather, they blame Global Warming and say that therefore it will get worse and that we are to blame. We Brought It On Ourselves. But it must be admitted that it, in this case, is rather startling:
BARCELONA, Spain — A Spanish-American scientific team will be scanning the United States this winter for what might be one of the weirdest byproducts of global warming: great balls of ice that fall from the sky.
The baffling phenomenon was first detected in Spain three years ago and has since been reported in a number of other countries, including the United States. So scientists now plan to monitor in a systematic way what they call “megacryometeors” — or great balls of ice that fall from the sky.
“I’m not worried that a block of ice may fall on your head,” said Dr. Jesus Martinez-Frias of the Center for Astrobiology in Madrid. “I’m worried that great blocks of ice are forming where they shouldn’t exist.”
Ice balls, which generally weigh 25 to 35 pounds but can be much bigger, have punched holes in the roofs of houses, smashed through car windshields, and whizzed right past people’s heads.
How very odd, as we say here. And as you constantly say if you are a regular reader of Dave Barry.
It’s tempting to start speculating where, and upon whom or what, we would most like one of these things to land.
Whom.
“I’ve got a little list” and my only problem is the order.
This is better than lightning!
Fred
The Great Balls of Ice in Spain,
fall mainly on the plains…
No, doesn’t really have the right meter.
10 to 1 its waste water from passenger jets.
LOL, that’d be rich Kevin, ha, and the meterologists could still say they were right…after all, it *WOULD* be a man-made weather effect, just not what they had in mind. Furthermore, where do they get off slapping this on global-warming, it seems to be the anti-panacea for doomsayers, whenever some odd weather event occurs, its global-warming (gee, as if this planet hasn’t had its streaks of bizarre weather over the course of the 4 and a half billion odd years we’ve had a considerable atmosphere.)
It’s a bit disturbing, if the researchers’ speculation that the objects originate in the tropopause is true. I’d hate to be aboard a jet that encounters — in clear air — the conditions needed to form one of these ice balls. Of course the fact that aircraft parts haven’t also been raining onto the countryside is a clue in itself.
Kevin
I must say I had no idea that might be the real explanation. With Matt I’m Ling OL.
If you’re right, all the more reason to bomb people and/or things whom we don’t with these disturbing objects.
My first thought was also planes. The ice balls don’t have a faint bluish color, do they?
The article said that they had ruled out airplane waste water. It specifically said that they looked for and did not find the blue color.
Nor did they find actual swaths of t.p., etc. It’s certainly hard to explain by natural agency alone, but we must suspend disbelief at least long enough to read the article in order to learn this.
Here is an early, and more likely reliable version of the same story. (As ever, there are a lot of copies out there.)
Big–really big–hail’s quite common in Central Europe and the southern US, so possibly this is just weather in an unusual place. The standard question has to be asked of a novel form of apocalypse: Is this a new and/or increasing phenomenon, or just one not much recorded before?
As a former denizen of the American deep South and a current one of Americas Southwest Dessert landscape I can vouch that we do, indeed, experience some very scary hail storms – sometimes as large as baseballs. Only on one occasion did I see one the size of a very large grapefuit (and I wish I had saved it given this 27 oz record they report – it would have been a contender) but I can barely imagine a 35 lb monster. WMD experiments?.
Doug Collins,
Yes, I see what the article says about these megocryometeors not coming from jet liners, but excuse me for doubting these guys. One, these things have no other explaination but that old bogeyman, global warming, and, remember, the simpler explainations are usually the correct ones. Second, “waste” water does not necessarily need to have human waste, disinfectant, or toilet paper in it. There’s a lot of water flying around up there as cargo. And I bet a lot is disposed of up there too. Further, who knows what would happen to waste and other things in the water in its long journey to earth? Could this stuff be separated out prior to the water’s freezing?
Jets were not in the vicinity, they say? Well, I bet even a 20 lbs. chunk of ice can travel far off course when dropped in the jetstream at 33 thousand feet.
One thing I do know, though: Don’t ask the airlines if they’ve been dumping stuff. I KNOW how they’d respond. “Who, us? No, we wouldn’t dump wastet over Kansas. Perish the thought!”
Humans caused these megacryo-hooziwhatsees fer sher, but ’tain’t global warming that’s to blame.