By LORNA COLQUHOUN
Union Leader Correspondent

BETHLEHEM – Friday was one of those nice fall days — clear and sunny, with a cloud or two poking around the sky.

It was a good day for yard work and that’s what Brad Chapman and groundskeeper Trevor Houston were doing, down by the stone wall, just before 12:30 p.m.

“All of a sudden, we heard a whoosh — it was like a two-second whoosh — and it was kind of eerie,” Chapman said. “And then we heard a thump and we looked around and saw this ball of ice, 30, 40 feet away, tops.” Goodness, gracious.

“It was eerie, that whoosh,” said Chapman, innkeeper at Adair Country Inn. “I looked around to see if someone was throwing snowballs — that was my first thought. And then I thought, ‘That’s a big snowball.’”

This photo was snapped a few minutes after a chunk of ice crashed into the ground a few feet from the Adair Country Inn in Bethlehem. (COURTESY)

The chunk of ice, which was mostly a grayish white with a tinge of pale pink, burrowed a couple of inches into the ground and smashed into pieces. The ones that didn’t break up were about the size of a fist and Chapman gathered them into a bowl, put it in the freezer and began pondering what it was.

A search of the sky found four contrails from passing jets above.

“Those were really high,” he said.

A search of the Internet found that other people have reported chunks of ice falling out of the sky, notably in Oakland, Calif., in 2006 and in Dubuque, Iowa, in 2007. Blue ice, it was noted, was likely disinfectant from an airplane’s waste system.

Chapman, his wife, Ilja, and inn owner Nick Young were intrigued by online discussions about megacryometeors, described as the phenomena of ice falling from the sky.

But several meteorologists, who examined e-mail photos of the ice over the weekend, said the chunk was likely from a passing airplane.

James Koermer, professor of meteorology at Plymouth State University, said a check of radar maps Friday “were not showing anything in the area,” nor was there any significant weather or cloud cover.

“The chunks also do not have any of the characteristics of natural hail and there were no storms in the area to produce hail,” he said. “I also checked for aircraft icing reports and there was some light rime icing reported in the Northeast, but nothing significant was mentioned. I would think that a pilot with an ice buildup this large would have noticed and reported it, but I can’t totally rule out that possibility.”

The ice chunks were intriguing to Mount Washington Observatory meteorologist Brian Clark, who was on duty this weekend.

“A plane seems very unlikely, mostly because that amount of ice on a plane would likely be detrimental to its ability to keep, well, flying,” he said. “Ice forming on planes is a very bad thing and that’s why planes often get deiced with a special fluid before takeoff in the winter time.”

Rime ice, or frozen fog, is a constant on Mount Washington and Clark said that with its color and texture, it didn’t look like what they see on the summit.

“It doesn’t look like any ice that I’ve ever seen in general, which makes me wonder if it’s actually water ice,” he said. “It has a very strange crystalline structure and texture for water ice, and the color is puzzling to me as well. If it is water ice, it is likely mixed with other substances.”

He suggested melting some of the pieces to see what the liquid looks, and smells, like.

State climatologist Mary Stampone said she doubts the ice was meteorological.

“It definitely was not hail, and I cannot think of anything else that weather-wise that would produce large chunks of ice to fall from the sky, especially something of that size and consistency,” she said.

For now, the ice chunks are in the inn’s freezer, available to anyone who wants to study it. Young placed a call late Friday to the Federal Aviation Administration, waiting to leave a message at the prompt for “strange occurrences.” He had not heard back from the agency this weekend.

“I figured they might want to know if that size of a chunk of ice came off an airplane,” he said.

The Chapmans are thankful, given how close it came to the inn and to where Brad Chapman was working, that it landed harmlessly.

“Out of the 30 acres we have here, it hit there,” Ilja Chapman said.

Fuente: UnionLeader.com

Un hombre de Bristol, ha descrito la forma en que fue golpeado por un bloque de hielo que el 5 de julio de 2009 cayó de un avión cuando él estaba sentado en su jardín.

David Gammon vive bajo la trayectoria de vuelo al aeropuerto internacional de Bristol.

Él dijo: “Escuchamos un avión que pasaba por encima y, a continuación, un sonido silbante y de repente un pedazo de hielo del tamaño de un durazno cayó sobre mi muslo”.

El señor Gammon, de 76 años, está herido pero se recupera. Bristol Internacional dice que no hay pruebas de que el hielo haya caído desde un avión utilizando el aeropuerto.

En una declaración, el aeropuerto dijo: “Bristol Internacional proporcionará todo el apoyo posible a la Autoridad de Aviación Civil en la investigación de este asunto.

“Sin embargo, variables como la altura del avión, la fuerza del viento, temperatura del aire y otros factores indican que el hielo podría haber venido de cualquier avión que sobrevolara una zona de aproximadamente cinco millas.

“Esto incluye los vuelos transatlánticos que entran a Heathrow, los vuelos a Alemania y el norte de Europa y las aeronaves que vuelen hacia o desde Bristol International”.

“Me han dicho que si me hubiera golpeado la cabeza, yo ya no estaría con ustedes”, añadió el señor Gammon.

Fuentes: Marcianitos Verdes, BBC, The Sun.

El pedazo, que cayó presumiblemente desde las alas de un avión, perforó el techo de la vivienda, sin causar lesiones a sus cuatro ocupantes.

Ricardo Ruiz, El Mercurio Online Miércoles 15 de Abril de 2009 21:55

LOS ANDES.- Un trozo de hielo, que presumiblemente cayó desde las alas de un avión comercial, provocó daños en una vivienda de la población Bicentenario de Los Andes, además del susto de los cuatro moradores.

Según explicó el dueño de casa, Arturo Matamala, el hecho ocurrió alrededor de las 23:00 horas del martes. Primero sintieron el paso del avión -situación habitual por ser Los Andes una ruta aérea- y luego una fuerte explosión.

El trozo de hielo perforó el techo de la vivienda y cayó entre el living y la cocina. Los cuatro ocupantes resultaron ilesos.

El Valle de Aconcagua es lugar de paso de grandes aviones comerciales que en esta zona inician el descenso y la aproximación hacia al Aeropuerto Internacional de Santiago.

Expertos en aeronáutica señalaron que es normal que al cruzar la cordillera los aviones acumulen hielo o nieve en sus alas.

Una situación similar ocurrió hace diez años en la zona, cuando un trozo de hielo cayó desde un avión sobre el cuartel del Cuerpo de Bomberos de Rinconada, provocando daños en un carro bomba.

El vecino afectado por esta situación, que habita en el Pasaje Darío Risopatrón Nº 30, dijo que intentará conservar parte del hielo por si alguien se interesa en analizarlo.

Fuente: El Mercurio online

By PABLO FERNANDEZ AND JIM WELLS — Sun Media. Sat, December 27, 2008. UPDATED: 2008-12-27 13:20:57 MST

Ice from a plane, possibly from a toilet, plummeted to earth and punched through the roof of a southeast Calgary house yesterday, narrowly missing a woman who was in the home.

Marian Liknes said she had just entered her bedroom to answer the phone shortly before 9:30 a.m., when a massive chunk of ice crashed through the ceiling with a deafening blast, mere centimetres from where she was sitting.

“I thought it was a gunshot at first and I ducked, I ducked down and I was scared, I was really scared,” said Marian.

“Then I got a bit hysterical, crying and shaking.

“Two feet over and it could’ve killed me … the police said it would’ve killed me.”

The frozen missile punched through roof shingles, wood, insulation and drywall with explosive force, leaving a half-metre hole in the house, located on Riverbend Dr. S.E. — and the bedroom littered with debris and ice, said the grandmother of four.

Marian was struck by flying shards of ice, which at the time she thought was glass.

She ran for cover, ducking into the couple’s ensuite bathroom.

“I peeked out and there was this huge hole in the ceiling … and there was ice everywhere and this huge chunk of ice on my bed, about two feet from me.

“Two hours earlier, my husband would’ve been lying on the bed.”

The couple lives under the approach path for Runway 34 of the Calgary International Airport and are accustomed to seeing jets above them, said Marian’s husband Wade.

“Some days you can see them stacked up one right behind the other,” he said.

“So, it’s not unusual to see planes coming in, but it is unusual to have stuff fall off of them.”

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada is gathering information on the incident, but is not clear what kind of plane or which airline was involved.

Although the safety board has not officially determined the cause of the incident, investigators believe it was likely frozen waste water from an airplane’s toilet system, said board spokesman Johnathan Lee.

In the past, O-ring valves — used to drain planes’ toilet water — have leaked while in flight, prompting the water to freeze to the outside of the fuselage and dislodging in the form of an ice chunk when the aircraft drops in elevation, he said.

“These kinds of occurrences are rare, but not unheard of,” said Lee, adding this is the first such incident in the Calgary area in at least nine years.

Fuente: The Calgary Sun

80-100 pound mass leaves gaping hole in roof
By Airan Scruby, Staff Writer
Posted: 12/18/2008 05:16:22 PM PST

PICO RIVERA (CALIFORNIA) – Lupe Murillo was sitting in the family room of her home, a few yards from the Christmas tree, when she heard a crash-landing on her roof.

It wasn’t Santa Claus.

A block of ice weighing 80 to 100 pounds smashed into the family’s house on Myron Street, snapping rafters in half and making a 3-foot hole in the roof.

Murillo, 54, said it was 11:30 on Wednesday night when she heard the ice strike her two-story home.

“This crash sounded like an airplane had fallen through the roof,” Murillo said.

The impact shook the house and forced a cloud of dust from the family’s attic through the home’s ventilation system.

The house is in the flight path for many planes coming in to Los Angeles International Airport.

According to Ian Gregor, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, initial inspections of photos sent by the homeowners suggest the ice might have fallen off the fuselage of an airplane.

“It’s not unheard of,” Gregor said. Ice from airplanes usually comes from aircraft lavatories, which occasionally leak fluid to the exterior of the plane. This liquid freezes at high altitudes into “blue ice,” then falls off when the plane descends to warmer air.

But this chunk, probably 2 feet in diameter falling from 9,000 to 10,000 feet, was no blue ice chunk, Gregor said.

He said FAA inspectors will be sent to examine the ice in person. The Murillos are storing a bucket of the ice in their freezer.

Four planes flying over the area at the time have been identified as the possible ice-droppers.

Those aircraft, two Boeing 737s and two Boeing 757s, are being tracked down through the airlines. They should be examined, Gregor said, to see if the ice caused any damage to the plane, or was the result of existing damage.

“You certainly don’t want a repeat,” Gregor said. “Luckily nobody was injured.”

The process of tracking down those aircraft could be tricky, Gregor said, because several hours after the incident, they could be scattered across the United States or even the world.

Murillo said she grew up in the house where she now lives with her husband, three children and elderly mother.

Three years ago, her family undertook an extensive remodel that transformed the house into a large, Mediterranean two-story. But progress has been slow, and the family was just remodeling the last room – a new master bathroom.

The hole in the roof will have to take priority now, Murillo said. Rain is expected early next week, and the family hopes to patch the hole before then.

Although the extent of the damage won’t be known until inspectors arrive, she said she’s confident their homeowner’s insurance will cover the damage, which includes not only the roof and unfinished attic, but new, tiny cracks in the upstairs walls.

“We can’t seem to get this house done,” Murillo said.

The ice bomb hasn’t been the only setback in construction. Six months ago, a car speeding down the residential street at 90 mph crashed into a brick fence, destroying it and taking out a pine tree in the front yard.

“Needless to say, I want a priest to come and bless the house,” Murillo laughed.

Fuente: Whittier Daily News

By MIKE LYONS. Special to the Daily News. Saturday, October 25, 2008

A 6-pound chunk of ice that smelled a little like fish and looked a lot like quartz made big news in York, Pa., last week. That’s because the frozen concoction fell from the sky, through a York woman’s roof and slightly injured her while she slept.

Mary Ann Foster was glad to be alive after a piece of the ice broke off and hit her on the forehead. The lump of ice left the 66-year-old grandmother with a large bump on her head and holes in her roof and bedroom ceiling.

Local officials, meantime, were left with a mystery: Where did the six pounds of ice come from? Some speculated that it might have fallen from an airplane or rocket, but the actual source remains unknown.

Ice, on a much smaller scale, does fall from the sky during thunderstorms. Most hailstones are often tiny compared to nickels and golf balls. Occasionally, hail the size of softballs shows up in Texas and Oklahoma, and every once in a while, so much hail falls in eastern Colorado that it looks like snow.

The largest hailstone in U.S. history fell from the sky in south-central Nebraska just over five years ago. It was the size of a soccer ball with a circumference of 18.75 inches. Still, it weighed a little more than 2 pounds, a tiny piece of ice compared to the chunk that hit Mary Ann Foster. And nothing like the 9-pound “hailstone” that fell in Waco, Texas back in the 1930s.

The great Waco hailstone was the talk of Texas for years. Photographs of the huge chunk of ice were seen around the world. Folks who witnessed the amazing event became local celebrities. It even became part of Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

There was just was one problem with the story: The hailstone didn’t come from the sky. It came from a hotel room.

On an overcast, humid afternoon one summer day in the late 1930s, a traveling salesman checked into the Raleigh hotel in downtown Waco. The salesman asked the bellhop to bring a block of ice and some liquor to his room.

As the salesman began sipping his first cocktail of the afternoon, the sky in downtown Waco turned black. A squall line of thunderstorms was approaching the city. Heavy rain, gusty winds and pea-sized hail soon began falling just outside the salesman’s hotel window.

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 marveling at their size.

Now on his second cocktail, the traveling 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 9-pound chunk out his hotel window.

The folks down on the street went crazy gathering around the large piece of ice like it was gold. Soon, a photographer from the local paper arrived to document the record-breaking event. Waco had made history.

The salesman did make an attempt to clear things up, to tell folks that he had thrown the ball of ice from his hotel room, but no one in Waco was listening. As far as the locals were concerned, Waco was now home to the largest hailstone in history, and no one was going to tell folks anything different.

Although we may never know where the 6-pound chunk of ice that struck Ms. Foster came from, the origin of the great Waco hailstone is crystal clear. Thanks to a traveling salesman with a sense of humor and an empty glass of liquor, a Texas tall-tale lives today.

Fuente: PalmBeachDailyNews.com

Reported by: Ben Russell. Last Update: 10/09 7:00 am

A York Township woman is lucky to be alive after a piece from a six-pound block of ice fell from the sky, crashed through her roof and struck her on her forehead Wednesday morning.

“It’s the weirdest thing that ever happened in my life,” Mary Ann Foster said.

Foster was lying in her bed when, around 5:30 a.m., the incident happened.

She called out to her husband to ask if he had heard anything.

“I think something weird happened upstairs,” Foster said.

“You better go up and check it out.”

Perry Foster, with whom Mary Ann has lived in their Deerfield Lane home for 31 years, went into their bedroom and discovered a large chunk of plaster and insulation dangling from the ceiling directly over their bed.

“And I was able to walk over here and look up through and actually see the sky,” Perry Foster said.

The Fosters gathered up the ice debris and put it in the freezer for safe keeping.

“I think it’s a UFO,” Mary Ann Foster said.

“We’re hoping it’s from outer space because that would be kind of exciting. But it might just be from an airplane over us that threw something out.”

CBS 21 contacted the Federal Aviation Administration Wednesday to determine if a plane was traveling over the Foster’s home at the time of the incident. Holly Baker, a spokesperson with the FAA, urged the Fosters to contact the local Flights Standards District Office and as for a safety inspector to come investigate. Without seeing the ice, Baker declined to speculate about its origin. But she did say it is possible that an unnoticed leak on an airplane could build up to the point that a large chunk of ice would eventually brake off. Baker also told CBS 21 that airplanes are not allowed to jettison materials while in the air.

York Area Regional Police Officer George McGee and Corporal Keith Dyke responded to the Foster’s home Wednesday to investigate. They confirmed that the piece of ice came through the outside roof of the house, through the insulation and continued through the ceiling in the bedroom.

Perry Foster said his wife is lucky that all she suffered was a bruise.

“Lucky in the fact that she was not seriously hurt,” Perry Foster said.

“And lucky in the fact that it didn’t happen in another location to someone who was walking down the street, because if it had hit someone directly… it would have killed them.”

Fuente: WHP-CBS

A. PASCUAL. MADRID.
Sevilla, Valencia, Soria o Madrid ya han recibido la visita de estos «megacriometeoros», generosos trozos de hielo que impactan súbitamente contra el suelo bajo un cielo despejado. Se intuye que el fenómeno ha existido siempre, si bien los primeros casos documentados datan de los años 50. En España se han registrado al menos nueve impactos en este siglo, la mayoría en los primeros meses de 2000. La lluvia de conglomerados de hielo supone un riesgo para personas y bienes materiales, pero constituye una amenaza especialmente aguda para la aviación.

Hasta ayer apenas conocíamos el fenómeno más allá de su peligrosidad, sin embargo, un estudio dirigido por Jesús Martínez-Frías, del Centro de Astrobiología del Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aerospacial (INTA), ha arrojado algo de luz sobre el misterio.

Un fenómeno nuevo

El término, «megacriometeoros» fue acuñado por el propio Martínez-Frías en 2002 en colaboración con David Travis, climatólogo de la Universidad de Wisconsin. «Hemos utilizado un término nuevo porque se trata de un fenómeno no estudiado hasta el momento. No es granizo, porque el análisis de su estructura indica lo contrario; además, el granizo se forma en las nubes, y estos impactos a menudo se dan en días solados», señaló el investigador a ABC.

Esta explicación sería suficiente para desmontar los postulados de voces críticas como la de Charles Knight, de la Corporación Universitaria para la Investigación Atmosférica en Colorado (EE.UU.), quien ha señalado que «no se puede formar hielo sólido en ausencia de nubes gruesas y claramente visibles».

Tras ocho años de investigación multidisciplinar —en ella han colaborado el Servicio de Criminalística de la Guardia Civil (SECRIM), el CSIC y varias universidades— todos los datos apuntan al origen atmosférico de los proyectiles. Los especialistas del SECRIM, que han tenido gran relevancia en el proceso, ya se decantaron por esta posibilidad en el informe pericial elaborado tras el impacto de un «megacriometeoro» en Mejorada del Campo el 13 de marzo de 2007.

Diversas teorías

En un primer momento se valoró la posibilidad de que todo fuese obra de un grupo de bromistas, pero la diversidad geográfica de los impactos, unida a la afinidad química de los bloques encontrados, hizo deshechar esta suposición.

Posteriormente, y al auspicio de los medios de comunicación, se empezó a hablar de «aerolitos», esto es, material procedente del espacio que llega a nuestro planeta. El término desagrada especialmente a la comunidad científica pues, como sostiene Josep Mª Trigo, de la Universidad de Valencia, «el hielo se hubiese destruido durante la entrada atmosférica. Además, la velocidad de caída no concuerda en absoluto con la de un objeto entrante».

Descartadas estas dos tesis, hubo quien señaló a los residuos producidos por el tráfico aéreo como causa. No obstante, el análisis químico de los «megacriometeoros» reveló la naturaleza inorgánica del compuesto. «No hay rastro de desinfectantes en el líquido, ni de cualquier otra materia orgánica. Es más, los primeros casos documentados proceden de épocas donde no existía la aviación», apuntó Martínez-Frías.

La investigación sitúa la formación de estas «rocas heladas» en la tropopausa, denominación que reciben los límites de la troposfera, la más cercana de las capas de la atmósfera.

Fluctuaciones de la troposfera

Según el equipo del INTA, las fluctuaciones térmicas experimentadas en esta zona provocarían ondulaciones extrañas en los vientos, así como un incremento súbito de la humedad y anomalías en la capa de ozono. En estas determinadas condiciones, la estela creada por los reactores de un avión sí podría favorecer la formación de las masas heladas, pero este hecho se encuentra todavía en una fase temprana de estudio.

«Desconocemos cómo empieza el proceso de nucleización de los trozos de hielo, y como se sostienen en la atmósfera pese a su elevado peso», comenta Martínez-Frías, para concluir: «Pero el caso es que caen». La ausencia de un modelo geofísico que lo explique todo no menoscaba su veracidad, pues el análisis isotópico de los elementos recogidos ha revelado una composición idéntica a la del agua de lluvia. El interior de las bolas de hielo está estratificado en capas, contiene burbujas de amonio y partículas de sílice, algunos de éstos son materiales compartidos con las partículas de granizo. La importancia de los resultados de la investigación ha sido destacada en numerosas publicaciones especializadas. El geólogo Roger Buick, en un artículo publicado en «Science», considera que «las investigaciones realizadas por los científicos españoles contituyen un avance importante que proporciona una explicación a tan espectacular fenómeno».

Indicios del cambio climático

El aumento de temperatura en determinadas áreas de la troposfera podría ser un nuevo indicador del fenómeno de cambio climático que sufre la Tierra. Un ascenso de la temperatura provocaría la emisión de más vapor de agua a la atmósfera, que a su vez provocaría ciertas ondulaciones en la troposfera.Desde el Centro Mediterráneo de Estudios Ambientales, el profesor Millán Millán bosqueja otra hipótesis. A tenor de lo observado por su equipo de trabajo, los seis casos sufridos en España durante enero de 2000 tienen una respuesta ambiental. En aquel mes, la baja estratosfera presentaba una humedad fuera de lo común, por lo que una condensación de agua, en caída libre durante 19 kilómetros a través de una atmósfera saturada, sería motivo suficiente para formar una bola de hielo de más de un kilogramo de peso.

Este conglomerado de circunstancias favorecería la creación de los «megacriometeoros», pero no «no se puede ser concluyente —advierte Martínez-Frías— al respecto, porque influyen muchos otros factores. Pero no me sorprendería que fuese un fenómeno en aumento.»

Fuente: ABC 20/05/2008.

A Baldwin Township resident had an unusual guest break in while the homeowner was away last month.
It came in through the roof, leaving a 3-foot hole, before crashing through the house’s main floor and landing in the basement.

By the time Sherburne County sheriff’s officials got a call from a neighbor, the intruder had already begun to melt into a puddle on the basement floor.

It was a large slab of ice that sheriff’s officials suspect dropped from a plane flying overhead.

A neighbor to the residence in the 115th block of 290th Avenue saw the ice chunk falling from the sky and watched as it hit the house, Capt. Joel Brott said. It happened about 6:10 p.m. April 28, he said.

Brott said the homeowner, whom he didn’t identify, wasn’t home at the time. Someone who knew the homeowner called and got permission from the homeowner for the sheriff’s department to enter the house and assess the damage.

That’s when deputies found the remaining ice in the home’s basement.

Fuente: Sctimes.com

By Sara Faiwell | Daily Herald Staff

An icy object fell from the sky and crashed through the roof of an Arlington Heights business Friday morning.

Around 3 a.m., several clear, frozen objects hit the manufacturing plant of Weber Marking Systems on Algonquin Road.

The icy items came through the roof of the plant where production was not under way, according to Chief Executive Officer Glenn Gilly. Although employees were there, none were near the area or were injured, he said.

Arlington Heights police and the Federal Aviation Administration are investigating the incident.

Although investigators aren’t sure what the object is, it’s definitely not blue ice – a term used for wastewater that comes from an aircraft, according to the FAA.

“We are still unsure if this came from an aircraft,” said spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory. “We are looking at aircraft over the area at that time trying to determine if it’s a leak.”

If the icy substance was from a leak, she said, it could have come from a plane’s drinking water supply.

“This is an extremely rare event,” she said. “When you think about the number of takeoffs and landings in this area, this is statistically really rare.”

The ice chunks were about four inches in diameter and left a hole in the roof about two feet by four feet.

A damage estimate on the roof isn’t available yet, said Gilly.

Weber Marking Systems designs and manufactures labeling products.

Published: 3/14/2008 5:02 PM | Updated: 3/15/2008 6:41 AM

Fuente: Daily Herald