22lb Ice Blocks From the Sky

cavedwler writes "An article http://www.msnbc.com/news/814100.asp?0dm=-23ET over on MSNBC has an interesting writeup about large ice blocks forming in the upper atmosphere on CLEAR days. Pretty interesting read." The article talks about how this could be a harbinger of massive climactic change. Either way, I'd prefer to not have one of these things smack into my house.

Comments

Let's hear it:

[jlowery]

I scream!
You scream!
We all scream for ice-- SPLAT!

My fair ice block

[markwusinich]

The ice in Spain falls mainly on your windshield.

So

[teslatug]

Anybody contacted Taco Bell yet?

Hey hey, put that chunk of ice away *ducks*

Understatement of the year

[capt.Hij]

provides an explanation for a spectacular phenomenon.

A quick look on mathsci.net shows other papers that they have published:

"Lake Superior: Gosh it sure is a lot of water," Journal of Hydrologic modeling.

Holy....

[GigsVT]

Jesus [...] has spent the last two and a half years investigating so-called megacryometeors

Cut the guy some slack, you think it's easy being the son of God?

Re:Holy....

[Swaffs]

So, having not read the article, just the comments (the short ones at least), if I follow correctly, large blocks of ice keep falling from the sky which are coming from giant meteors that are crying, but we shouldn't worry because Jesus is investigating this.

Well, good. I was worried for a bit there.

Another Slashdot formula crapsule...

[Wraithlyn]

Don't they get sick of using the same template? To wit:

"An article over at [some news site] has an article about [some subject]. Pretty interesting read. They talk about [cut n paste something from article]. Either way, [say something stupidly obvious]."

Sorry. It's monday.

Acts of God

[sssmashy]

I'm not a religious man, but you ever get nailed by a 30kg block of ice falling from a clear sky, you can be pretty sure God was trying to tell you something.

Kinda fishy

[sawilson]

The article talks about hail, but they fail to
mention that hail ONLY comes from thunderstorms.
Just like tornadoes ONLY come from thunderstorms.
And almost all lighting comes from, you guessed it,
thunderstorms. They also fail to talk about the
freezing level. That's how a thunderstorm becomes
a thunderstorm. A cumulus cloud that's growing
upwards because of vorticity (air rising fast)
grows past the freezing level. The top of the
cloud and the bottom of the cloud get different
charges and blammo, you have a big floating battery in the
sky. The hail forms because there are rapidly
moving columns of air moving up and down
in the cloud and water trapped in that column
gets frozen, recoated with water, frozen again,
etc.

The ice clouds he's talking about are
cirrus clouds of some kind. That's basically
any cloud made up of super tiny ice crystals
because they are above the freezing level.
a VERY VERY rare type of cloud is called
cirrocumulus. This is ice crystal clouds in
the shape of the puffy white clouds called
cumulus that sometimes turn into thunderstorms.
The reason these clouds are so rare is because
they are unbelievably heavy. It takes an
incredible amount of 'vorticity' to keep
them up there, and they don't last long.
If you ever see very high puffy cottonball
looking clouds, there's a great chance you'll
have a thunderstorm soon (24-48 hours) because
vorticity (air rising fast) is one of the major
things needed. There is NO WAY upper atmosphere
vorticity is going to hold water in the air
long enough for it to weigh 10 friggin pounds.
There is no way that ice clouds would clump
together and form ice. There is simply no force
there to do that work. You might get a ball of
something more like snow, but definitely not
ice. I'd be more willing to bet some smartass
with a catapult is having fun at the ice factory.
If they said this was related to thunderstorm
activity, I might buy it. But on a clear day?
No way.

Re:Kinda fishy

[rlk]

Both cirrus and cirrocumulus are formed from tiny ice crystals (cirrocumulus is when small convective cells form within the cloud). A lot of cirrus is actually of convective origin, the blowoff from thunderstorms.

Vorticity actually means rotation (turning) of the air, not lifting. However, positive (cyclonic) vorticity near the surface is associated with lifting of the air. That doesn't necessarily mean dramatic convective lifting that produces thunderstorms, but air will be lifted in those regions.

Hail forms in thunderstorms with strong updrafts. These updrafts are needed to keep the hailstones from simply falling out of the cloud. In order to get giant hailstones, the updraft has to be very strong indeed.

A 35 pound chunk of ice is on the order of a 10-inch cube (if it's really solid). That's much bigger than any hailstone ever recorded; the biggest known was about 7 inches long and 4-5 inches on the short axis; hailstones are rarely that solid, and it probably didn't weigh more than 5 pounds or thereabouts. I think it fell in Coffeyville, Kansas during a severe thunderstorm (surely a supercell, with a very persistent, rotating updraft, that may well have spawned a tornado). This isn't rocket science; think about what the terminal velocity of a 35 pound chunk of ice is, and the updraft has to be close to that in velocity.

Any situation where the air is rising that violently is either going to have a very obvious cloud (read: thunderstorm) associated with it; the heat released by the condensation of the water makes the air more buoyant, and hence increases the lift. A dry thermal isn't going to approach that kind of velocity, and even if it did, it would be...well...dry.

What all of that basically amounts to is...well...that dog don't hunt. The only realistic source of that kind of thing is water being dumped by airplanes at high enough altitudes so that it has time to freeze before reaching the surface. A chunk of ice that big should be easy to save long enough to be examined; they should give a few samples to NOAA, say, and let them inspect it.

Re:Kinda fishy

[ScottBob]

The problem I have with the airplane theory, however, is that the instant that the water is ejected from the plane it will break up into thousands upon thousands of tiny drops which will instantly freeze at that altitude. A large mass of water would not freeze instantly due to its large heat capacity, yet at the same time it will not remain together due to the various forces yanking it apart (esp. friction).

One news report that I saw not too long ago was that an ice block smashed through the roof of a house, and investigators on the scene said it came from an airplane. Indeed, it was the same color of blue as the disinfectant in the airplane toilet flushing water. IIRC, they said that the holding tank had a slow leak, and the water made its way to the exterior of the fuselage (sucked through a hole from a popped rivet, perhaps) where it was broken up into a spray by the air rushing past. The spray collected and instantly froze directly behind the leak on the cold aluminum skin where one of the tail fins joined to the fuselage, collecting and forming a sizeable ball of blue ice. (Heating due to friction would have been negligeable here.) As the plane approached for a landing, slowing down and descending into a warmer layer of air, the aluminum skin conducted just enough heat to cause the blob of ice to separate from the surface and fall, crashing through the roof. Into the bathroom of the house. Imagine the odds.

Obvious solution .....

[binaryDigit]

Just get everyone to run dual proccie Itanium2's. The things will melt before they get within a 1000ft of any suitably equipped home.

The Real Question

[istartedi]

for me is not whether or not ice can form. Of course it can form. The question in my mind is what kind of wind can sustain such a large glob?

Traditional hailstones form in the updrafts of thunderstorms--the more forceful the updraft, the larger the hailstones. This begs the question of what kind of wind is keeping these things aloft and allowing them to form. The answer could be easily found in a wind tunnel. What you need to know is the terminal velocity of these ice "blocks". I assume they are not actually blocks. That would just be too wierd.

Perhaps, there is some kind of ice structure that forms and has a very low terminal velocity... ice parachutes with thick centers? Then, as it falls through the atmosphere whatever it is that reduces the terminal velocity melts, leaving the "payload".

Also, is there any correlation between these things and anything else (like contrails?). If there is, then maybe we could use doppler RADAR to look for clear-air updrafts, and a telescope to view these things as they form. Of course, maybe these things are highly localized--little tornados in the upper atmosphere... maybe they are smaller than the resolution of the RADAR.

At any rate, I just hope these things stay away from my head.

Actual Martinez-Frias Research Site Link

[meehawl]

I see lots of people asking basic questions such as "What about...?" and "What if...?" and "How come...?" Come on people, get past the popsci article and go straight to the source from the guy himself.

But seriously

[thelexx]

From his website:

Martinez-Frias has also published around 130 articles in scientific and technical publications (mainly specialised in Earth Sciences -- Geology, Economic Geology, Mineralium Deposita, Computer and Geoscience, Neues Jahrbuch fur Mineralogy, Geotimes, GeoMarine Letters, Episodes, Geological Magazine, Applied Geochemistry, Journal of Chromatography, AMBIO, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, Meteoritics and Planetary Science, etc.), in high profile multidisciplinary publications (Nature), high prestige international books (Springer-Verlag, Geological Society) in popular magazines, (Mundo Cientifico, Fronteras de la Ciencia y la Tecnología) and in the Scientific supplements of national newspapers (ie El Pais, El Mundo, ABC).

Martinez-Frias is the author of the book "Sulfuros y Sulfosales de Metales Nobles" and co-editor of several books, among which are; "Recursos Minerales de España" (CSIC 1478p) (Spanish Mineral Resources), "Geologia y Metalogenia en Ambientes Oceanicos. Depósitos Hidrotermales Submarinos (Geology and Metallogeny of Seafloor Hydrothermal Deposits) (IEO, 162p) and "Esto es Imposible" (Aguilar, 320p).

Let's add a melody

[Mind Socket]

Ice blocks keep falling on my head
And that prob'ly means concussion soon will make me dead ...

Where is Charles Fort when you really need him?

[dpbsmith]

Stories about weird stuff falling from the sky have been with us for millennia. Charles Fort (1874-1932) devoted his life to collecting newspaper clippings of rains of fungi, formless masses of protoplasm, hatchets, masks, the ceremonial regalia of savages, and stones--with and without inscriptions. One of his accounts, The Book of the Damned is online here. (By "the damned," he means data that science refuses to accept).Written in an almost poetic, tart, prose style, it is very readable. He talks of rains of "Butter and beef and blood and a stone with strange inscriptions upon it." Most of his information was obtained from newspaper accounts.

I'm inclined to take a very skeptical view of any stories about weird stuff falling from the sky. Maybe it's true about the blocks of ice, and maybe Fort's falls of frogs and fishes were true, and maybe other accounts of worms, snails mussels, snakes, turtles, and even a whole calf are true.

But I'd want to see heavier evidence than an MSNBC story.

Anyway, Fort would have loved this one.

Ice blocks might be climate change?

[mesocyclone]

It seems that every news article about weather events these days mentions a possible connection to climate change! Has it occurred to anyone that since there is a lot of money for climate change research, scientists, in response to the inevitable reporter question, will of course say it *might* have something to do with climate change.

It is time for a new fear. Climate change is getting trite!

Re:It's started

[jedwards]

And lo, the lord decreed that 22 is now in between 50 and 60. And all those whose salary is $22K rejoiced. And all those who are 22 years old suddenly went all baggy in all the wrong places and there was much wailing and gnashing of false teeth.