Falling Chunks of Ice pelt Iowa neighborhood
Pastor Dale Morgan
Falling Chunks of Ice pelt Iowa neighborhood*
DUBUQUE, Iowa (AP) — Large chunks of ice, some of them reportedly about
50 pounds, fell from the sky in this northeast Iowa city, smashing
through a woman's roof and tearing through nearby trees.
Authorities were unsure of the ice's origin but have theorized the
chunks either fell from an airplane or naturally accumulated high in the
atmosphere — both rare occurrences.
"It sounded like a bomb!" 78-year-old Jan Kenkel said. She said she was
standing in her kitchen when an ice chunk crashed through her roof at
about 5:30 a.m. Thursday. "I jumped about a foot!"
She traced the damage to her television room, where she found a messy
pile of insulation, bits of ceiling, splintered wood and about 50 pounds
of solid ice.
Karle and Mary Beth Wigginton, who live a block away, heard a loud
"whoosh" coming through the trees. They discovered several large chunks
of ice in front of their home and some smaller ones in the yard and in
the street.
"I could see where branches were shredded, which told me it was
definitely coming out of the sky," Karle Wigginton said.
He estimated the original chunk of ice was the size of a basketball. "It
was pure white," he said. "The main parts I picked up were very smooth."
Elizabeth Cory, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration,
said investigators would contact Kenkel to try to determine the source
of the ice.
"It is very uncommon for something like this to come from an aircraft,"
Cory said. "That is really unusual if it is pure white ice, especially
at this time of year."
Occasionally, aircraft latrines discharge contents at altitude,
resulting in chunks of descending ice. Airplanes also sometimes
accumulate ice on their edges in certain atmospheric conditions,
including high altitude and extreme moisture, said Robert Grierson, the
Dubuque Regional Airport manager and a pilot.
The moisture involved in such a scenario could have come from the tops
of strong thunderstorms. However, Dubuque had clear skies at the time
the ice fell, said Andy Ervin, a meteorologist with the National Weather
Service in Davenport. "There was nothing unusual going on," he said.
David Travis, a professor of geography and geology and an associate dean
at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, has studied the phenomenon of
large chunks of ice falling from a clear sky. He said it's possible the
ice could have been a megacryometeor — "similar to a hailstone, but
without the thunderstorm."
Travis is part of a research team that has documented more than 50
possible megacryometeor cases during the past five years. Some involve
ice chunks the size of microwave ovens.
"It is hard to keep something like that suspended in air without a
thunderstorm," Travis said.
Most megacryometeor sightings have occurred in coastal areas, where
atmospheric turbulence helps keep ice suspended long enough to grow into
large chunks.
Travis' research team speculates the phenomenon could be linked to
global warming, suggesting that climate change might make the tropopause
portion of the atmosphere colder, moister and more turbulent.
"But those don't typically happen in the summer time," Travis said. "It
seems like they are mostly associated with the passage of passing cold
fronts."