Russian residents living along the Arctic Bay of Ob encountered thousands of round snowballs as if someone had kneaded them on the beach.
The snowballs are round as if they were made by humans.
Residents of the village of Nyda in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region, Russia, located above the Arctic Circle, discovered thousands of snowballs of different sizes since October 28. The smallest fruit is as big as a tennis ball while the largest is as big as a basketball.
“The spheres appeared in the same place as if someone had molded them. They came in many sizes, large and small. We were all very surprised. Many people only truly believed it when they saw it with their own eyes. This phenomenon has never happened before. happened before and there wasn’t much snow in the area. It was an interesting scene,” Ekaterina Chernykh, a local resident, shared.
“When the water in the bay rose, it came into contact with ice. The beach began to be covered with ice. When the water receded, the ice remained. Pieces of ice rolled on the wet sand and became balls “, Valery Akulov, the village leader, explained.
According to Sergey Lisenkov, spokesman for the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI), this is a rare natural phenomenon. Slippery ice mixed with slush under the influence of wind, coastal roads and temperature, rolls downhill and creates snowballs. A similar phenomenon happened in Lake Michigan, USA, in 2014.
