Ice Balls
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Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is the Weather Notebook. We get a steady stream of electronic correspondence from listeners. The emails are varied, from sharing weather trivia and fascinating stories to asking questions about unexplained weather events they've seen. Recently, we got a query from Ann Alpern who listens to the Weather Notebook on WBFO-FM in Buffalo, New York. Ms. Alpern wanted to give a name to what she'd seen and held on one of the Great Lakes.

"We were able to stay late at what had been our summer only house on the Canadian shore of Lake Erie. We saw many things that can only be seen in late autumn; hundreds of migrating birds including ducks, swans and turkey vultures.

The strangest didn't fly it rolled. Initially, I thought they were fieldstones exposed by the breaking waves. I'm always looking for fieldstones for my rock garden so I hurried down to the water's edge to harvest some stone. I was trying to figure how I was going get them all back into the yard cause those suckers are heavy. The first one I picked up was the size of a basketball but it weighed next to nothing. I dropped it and it shattered. It was composed of ice crystals, seaweed and small shells. Thank goodness they stayed around for about a week rolling around the waters edge. People, especially my kids, thought I had lost it when I told them about my rolling stones.

Any explanations or name for this phenomenon?"

Ann Alpern of Buffalo, New York, we'll find out what those giant ice balls are in tomorrow's report. The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory and is supported generously by Subaru of America. Thanks today to executive engineer Sean Doucette.