Thousands of giant snowballs appear on Siberian beach

Monday, November 7, 2016, 4:35 PM - This 18 kilometre stretch of beach in Russia looks like the staging ground for an epic snowball fight between yetis, thanks to a natural - but very rare - phenomenon.

For the past couple of weeks, the shores along the Gulf of Ob have been inundated by the ice globes, which range from tennis ball-sized to almost a metre in diameter, according to a BBC report.

Residents of the nearby village of Nyda, just inside the Arctic Circle, started noticing them about 10 days ago.

While it looks anything but, the formation of the snowballs is actually a natural occurrence. The balls form similarly to the way you might construct a snowman - by rolling a small snowball along the ground to let it pick up extra snow - except in this case, it's the waves of the ocean rather than your hands doing the work.

Speaking to the Siberian Times, Sergey Lisenkov of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute said, "When the water in the Gulf rose, it came into contact with the frost. The beach began to be covered with ice. Then the water began to slowly retreat, and the ice remained. Its pieces were rolling over in the west sand, and turned into these balls."

Lisenkov called it a "rare natural phenomenon", citing the action of the wind, outlines of the coastline, and temperature as the ingredients for such an event.

Nyda village administrator Valery Akulov told the Siberian Times the ice balls were a surprise for the village. "Even old-timers say they [saw] this phenomenon for the first time," Akulov said.

Resident Ekaterina Chernykh said it was "as if someone had spilled them" on the beach. "Most people believed it only when [they] saw with [their] own eyes."

BBC News reported a similar event happened on Lake Michigan in December 2015, and in the Gulf of Finland in 2014. Youtube user maple742 recorded the ice balls on Lake Superior in 2014, as seen in the video below.

Sources: BBC | The Siberian Times |