Posted on 01/08/2010 6:27:18 PM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Rare self-rolling giant snow balls found in UK
They may look like winter's answer to crop circles, but these mysterious snow rolls are in fact a rare natural phenomenon usually found only in the world's most remote and frozen regions.
By Heidi Blake
Published: 9:45PM GMT 08 Jan 2010
The rare snow rolls are formed by a combination of strong winds and fresh, moist snow Photo: Ron Trevett
Also known as snowrollers, snow bales and snow doughnuts, they form mostly in unusual conditions created by a precise combination of snow, ice, wind, temperature and moisture on the prairies of North America.
But this week's frozen weather has allowed the snow cylinders to make a freak appearance in the UK.
Ron Trevett, 55, and his wife Aileen, 54, readers of The Daily Telegraph, were stunned when they stumbled across the mysterious formations as they walked their dogs in a field near their home in Yeovil, Somerset.
"We saw them from a distance on the ridge of the field, and we thought some kids had been playing up there and making giant snowballs," said Mr Trevett.
"But when we got up there we saw there were no footprints and there were hundreds of them – too many for children to have done it. We realised it must have been the wind."
Mr Trevett, a builder, said he and his wife felt privileged to have witnessed such a rare phenomenon. "We feel very lucky. I'm the wrong side of fifty and I've never seen anything like it in my life. We were gobsmacked to look at them there in the sunlight. It was a really impressive sight, and I took some pictures so other people could share it," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Even the snow is trying to head south for warmer climates.
Proof that Global warming it real.
Those are cool.
Thanks for posting it.
We had this for the only time in my life ,back in ,I think,2004.Even the blizzard of 1977-78 with much deeper snow had no such natural snowmen in this area of the Ohio Valley.
I am gobsmacked. :)
The snow is obviously trying to make contact with an alien life force.
My grandmother mentioned seeing something like that once in Nebraska as a kid. I never saw pics, so I didn’t quite understand what she was talking about. I hadn’t thought about ‘em for years, so it’s quite amazing to see.
It would be nice to see them form around the climate center in East Anglia.
I’ve seen these in Milwaukee south of the airport. Pieces of snow would come off the edge of a drift at the top of an embankment that flanks the road that cuts across the southern approaches and roll to the bottom making snow disks.
[The top snow layer becomes a bit sticky, and you then need a fairly strong wind. The sticky layer can be peeled off the colder and more powdery snow underneath by the wind forming a roll.]
Not sure who keeps track of strange things like this but pinging a couple of people on it. Thanks for posting TKR!
Orange Alert!!!
Lol, just so it doesn’t roll over you!
Not sure WHO keeps track of these oddities of nature.
I have lived in the northern plains all of my life and have never seen nor heard of this phenomenon. When wind moves the snow up here we call it a blizzard.
Nature reinvents the wheel.
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ilx/events/roller/roller.php
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2003/02/13/tem_snowrollers13.html
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