Posted on 04/16/2006 5:30:07 AM PDT by mathprof
The skies are raining big chunks of ice, and experts ranging from scientists to federal investigators are scrambling to learn what's going on.
For the second time in a week, California was the victim of an aerial, icy assault, the latest being early Thursday when a chunk of ice the size of a microwave oven plunged out of a cloudless sky into the San Bernardino County town of Loma Linda. The ice punched through the metal roof of a recreation center, leaving a hole up to 2 1/2 feet wide... No one was hurt.
Two tennis players were batting a ball around outside the Drayson Center at Loma Linda University on Thursday morning when they heard a strange sound...
"They described it as the sound an artillery shell would make -- shoosh, shoosh,'' he said. "They looked up. They didn't see the ice, nor did they see a plane.''
A similar incident occurred last Saturday in Oakland, where a plunging ice ball plowed into a field at Bushrod Park on Shattuck Avenue and blasted out a crater up to 2 feet wide. Again, no one was hurt.
The simplest, least controversial hypothesis is that the ice was dropped from airplanes, but there's little direct support for that view. [snip]
But how can ice fall from a cloudless sky? Martinez-Frias speculates that global warming is causing the lower part of the atmosphere -- the troposphere, where we live -- to expand and rise. This means that the tropopause, which is the so-called roof of the troposphere, is forced to a greater height, where it cools more than normal.
Thus, he suggests, the new, steeper temperature difference between warm and cold air in the upper atmosphere generates turbulent up-and-down winds that repeat the hail-formation process, without a thunderstorm
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
That's it. I'm moving underground. Anyone have old mine property for sale?
That Karl Rove guy is at it again.
LOL! We're doomed I tell ya! DOOMED! Al Gore is right! Al Gore is right!!
The "lemming from Tennessee" is out of balance.
Martinez-Frias should be defrocked, it would upwards wind swells of about 150 miles per hour to keep microwave full of ice suspended. That isn't happening in clear sky.
This "ice" wasn't blue with brown and yellow swirls, was it?
We had better move fast. Those people have been acquiring mine shafts for some time, and we now live on the precipice of a mine shaft gap.
Ya, I saw that also.
I remember the "blue ice" that fell. Turned out to have come from an airplane.
God spilled His ice tea?
It is the latest evidence of Global Cooling.
I don't know of any mines, but This Property may meet your needs.
Quick, plant some pine trees.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1615364/posts
Was the ice colored blue?
There is a rogue trebuchet out there. It is being loaded with frozen water baloons.
http://www.trebuchet.com/
You mean an "icy-BM"???
Oh Pluheeez. This is becoming worse than "my dog ate my homework".
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