The phenomenon was a gift from Mother Nature, and that’s the easiest answer to how the snowballs appeared on a beach near the village on the Gulf of Ob, says CTV News.
Some of the perfectly formed snowballs were baseball-sized, while others were much larger, more suitable for making snowmen. Literally, thousands of the snowballs appeared on the beach in Russia’s Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous region, which happens to be far, far above Siberia.
The best explanation for the snowballs is to attribute their appearance to a rare weather phenomenon that requires a series of events, involving ice, wind, and cold, to take place at just the right time.
And while the snowball phenomenon has never been seen before in Nyda, according to the Telegraph, it has occurred over the past several years on Lake Michigan.
Snow Roller Phenomenon
Snow rollers are a rare meteorological phenomenon in which snowballs are created naturally when chunks of are blown along the ground by the wind, accreting like a snowball as they gather materials along the way. They can be as small as a tennis ball or larger than a car.
In 2014, residents along Lake Michigan’s shoreline were greeted by thousands of snow rollers, or snowballs along the shore, being lapped by the icy waves of the lake. As in Nyda, the balls ranged in size from tennis balls to large boulders.
AccuWeather.com Meteorologist Jim Andrews said the balls began to form as water from the lake started to freeze and was pushed to shore by the waves. “As the waves lap the shore, the ice is tumbled, smoothed and frozen into a round shape,” he said.
So you see, certain conditions are needed for this rare event to take place:
1. There must be a very thin surface layer of wet, loose snow, or just formed new ice, not quite solid yet.
2. There must be a substrate to which the thin surface layer of wet snow will not stick, such as ice or powder snow.
3. The wind must be strong enough, but not too strong, to move the snow rollers.
4. Gravity can also move the snow rollers, as when a glob of snow falls from a tree and rolls down a hill, growing larger.
The snowball phenomenon is really cool, even though it is a rare event. And while the process does require specific conditions, it’s definitely not an abnormal event.
