Unusual "Ice Boulders" on Lake Michigan are being promoted by some as evidence of a secret "geoengineering" program, when actually they are a natural phenomena that simply does not happen every winter because it needs certain combinations of weather conditions.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/09/lake-michigan-ice-balls-video_n_4570097.html
https://archive.org/details/4736697.0001.001.umich.edu
http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/climate-engineering-fuels-devastating-hail-storms/
[bunk]
Are there other recent examples of unprecedented “ice balls” created by massive artificial/chemical spraying of nucleating elements?
Yes again.
Ice boulders on the Great Lakes never before seen until the last few years. Do you believe the explanations given for all the unprecedented oddities by the mainstream media “experts” who are literally paid to say whatever their told to say?[/bunk]
But as we above, the claim "never before seen until the last few years" is just flat wrong. In fact there's a 1966 book with multiple reports going back to the 1940s. So how did this misconception arise?
The problem with rare phenomena is that they don't happen very often.
Since they happen so infrequently, people often encounter them as new things. This becomes a particular problem in the early decades of the internet age (i.e. now, and for the next few decades). Because of the huge proliferation of phones that take photos and record videos, and the easy transmission of these over the internet, then there every-ten-years-or-so rare events which might just a mention in the local news (if that - as they are not so interesting to locals) become a national story, because it's unusual and interesting.
Ball Ice has of course happened before, as shown above, and it's even happened in even in the internet age. Here's one story from 2002:
http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/whys/iceballs.htm
http://www.thelocal.se/20100105/24210
Here's an account from the 1999 book "Huron: The Seasons of a Great Lake"
http://books.google.com/books?id=8HQoq7R0nWQC&lpg=PA47&dq=frazil ice balls&pg=PA48#v=onepage&q=frazil ice balls&f=false
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/09/lake-michigan-ice-balls-video_n_4570097.html
And here's a historical account from the 1966 book Air photo interpretation of Great Lakes ice features:
The balls form when chunks break off the massive ice sheets that coat parts of the lake in the winter, Annie Lipscomb, a park ranger at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, explained to MLive. They gain their shape as waves in the lake ceaselessly toss them about, slowly rolling them into spheres.
Depending on the temperature, some of the ice balls may keep growing. According toAccuWeather.com meteorologist Jim Andrews, the balls can build up more and more ice "like a snowball or like a hailstone." Layers of water coat the ball then freeze.
A similar marvel occurred last winter in Lake Michigan's Good Harbor Bay, prompting officials to comment on the impressive size of the ice balls, some of which weighed more than 50 pounds.
"It's not that it never happens and this is a once in a decade thing," Tom Ulrich, the deputy superintendent from the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, told UpNorthLive at the time, "it happens more often than that, but these are very large and got bigger than they normally get."
https://archive.org/details/4736697.0001.001.umich.edu
Yet some alternative theorists suggest they are so unusual they must be evidence of a secret program of geoengineering:BALL ICE FORMATION Ball ice consists of roughly spherical masses of slush and frazil ice which accrete in turbulent water. Loewe (1949) reported ball ice 3-5 cm in diameter in the sub-Antarctic waters of the South Atlantic and ascribed its origin to the accretion of slush and frazil ice. Ball ice in the Great Lakes was observed by the writer in a nearshore zone of Lake Huron in the Rogers City area, Michigan. The ball ice formation was observed during a time of intense, local snow squalls which left patches of slush on the water surface. This ball ice was composed principally of slush which was shaped by the turbulent water conditions offshore from the cliffed icefoot into lumps and balls up to 1 meter in diameter (see Fig. 19). The lumps that formed in the less turbulent zones, a few tens of meters offshore, were flattened discs, while those that entered the extremely turbulent zone near the ice foot accreted into spheres. Water turbulence at the foot of the icefoot stirred sand into suspension causing lumps entering this zone to accrete concentric bands of sand and slush (see Fig. 20). As a result of intense wave action these balls were thrown onto the icefoot where they froze and added sand and ice to the barrier. In other cases the ball ice was carried by winds and currents into coves where it collected to form a uniquely structured ice sheet (see Fig. 21). This drift of the ball ice serves to redeposit sand both along the shore and in deep-water sites. Ball ice has been observed in other areas of the Great Lakes. During ice reconnaissance flights over Lake Superior in early January, the writer observed wide zones of this type of ice along the shoreline west of the Keweenaw Peninsula and along the Marquette shoreline. In these areas rough lumps up to 2 meters in diameter were frequently observed. Extensive fields of loose ball ice were observed in the western basin of Lake Erie, while later in the season similar fields were observed frozen in a matrix of clear ice (Fig. 22). Ball ice has also been frequently observed along the Lake Ontario shoreline east of Oswego, N. Y. (A. G. Ballert, Personal communication). *Director of Research, Great Lakes Commission, Ann Arbor, Mich., 1965. 22
http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/climate-engineering-fuels-devastating-hail-storms/
[bunk]
Are there other recent examples of unprecedented “ice balls” created by massive artificial/chemical spraying of nucleating elements?
Yes again.
Ice boulders on the Great Lakes never before seen until the last few years. Do you believe the explanations given for all the unprecedented oddities by the mainstream media “experts” who are literally paid to say whatever their told to say?[/bunk]
But as we above, the claim "never before seen until the last few years" is just flat wrong. In fact there's a 1966 book with multiple reports going back to the 1940s. So how did this misconception arise?
The problem with rare phenomena is that they don't happen very often.
Since they happen so infrequently, people often encounter them as new things. This becomes a particular problem in the early decades of the internet age (i.e. now, and for the next few decades). Because of the huge proliferation of phones that take photos and record videos, and the easy transmission of these over the internet, then there every-ten-years-or-so rare events which might just a mention in the local news (if that - as they are not so interesting to locals) become a national story, because it's unusual and interesting.
Ball Ice has of course happened before, as shown above, and it's even happened in even in the internet age. Here's one story from 2002:
http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/whys/iceballs.htm
Here's a more recent example from Sweden in 2010:
If wind and wave are high, these chunks are quickly pushed back onshore forming an "ice foot" from the beach into the water. But, if the waves are small and wind light, some chunks move out into the lake. These floating chunks then become rounded into balls through their jostling in the waves. The iceballs then can migrate along the longshore until they melt or are again tossed back onshore.
http://www.thelocal.se/20100105/24210
Note again how even more rare this is in Sweden. Three since the 1950s means about one every 20 years. Plenty of time for them to seem like a new thing.
Once formed, the balls likely came back to shore and, rather than floating out to open water, remained there due to a change in sea conditions in the days before the ice balls were discovered. Water levels sank several decimetres between December 17th and December 18th when Bladh and his colleagues found the ice balls lying on the shore.
Beside's Bladh's discovery, SMHI's website only mentions two other reported instances of ice balls being discovered in Sweden since the 1950s.
Here's an account from the 1999 book "Huron: The Seasons of a Great Lake"
http://books.google.com/books?id=8HQoq7R0nWQC&lpg=PA47&dq=frazil ice balls&pg=PA48#v=onepage&q=frazil ice balls&f=false
Last edited:
