Mysterious ice balls falling from heavens

By MICHAEL WOODS
THE (TOLEDO, OHIO) BLADE

BARCELONA, Spain — A Spanish-American scientific team is monitoring ice events in the United States this winter following research on a baffling phenomenon first detected here.

They are not watching for ordinary ice storms or slick roads, but incidents involving “megacryometeors,” great balls of ice that fall out of the clear blue sky — possibly because of global warming.

I was disappointed that the story didn’t provide accounting of the possibilty that the cores of these oversized ice accretions – big balls, if you will – had been formed in the upper atmosphere around the high-altitude scat of high-flying birds.

These bird droppings could clearly be lofted up quite high in the correct circumstances and then form the cores for the icing process.

Really it seems clear to me, something we’ve known since at least 1963: nowhere on earth can really be safe from aerial bombardment by an ICBM.

Thank you! I’ll be here all week!

[pun stolen from Spider Robinson as used in some Callahan‘s yarn!]