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Snowball from nowhere

N

nissemus

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
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Nov 19, 2005
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I was standing on my balcony a few minutes ago, and while I was doing so a double-decker bus went past in the street below. As I was watching it, there was a loud "crack!" and I saw a large snowball, about half the size of a basketball, hit the roof of the bus and bounce off, disintegrating as it did so.

Now I know that kids like throwing snowballs at buses, but unlike other parts of the UK, we've only had a tiny amount of snow falling here, and that melted as soon as it hit the ground. The bus was too far away for anyone to have thrown a snowball from my building, and there are no buildings high enough on the other side of the road for anyone to have been able to hit the roof of the bus. But the main point is that there isn't any snow here to make a snowball with in the first place - so where did it come from?
 
Did it look like it had been shaped, or was it just a great big wodge of snow?
 
If the snow was just a "lump" it may have been sitting on top of a roof and rolled down as the temperature changed and melted the snow around it - let's hope an elf or :p something threw it, though!
 
could it have been ice or something similar falling from a plane? Although I guess it would have been falling fast enough to cause pretty major damage if it was ...?
 
Considering the loud noise it made and the fact that the remains of it stayed on the road for several hours afterwards, I think it must have been ice rather than snow. However there wasn't anything in the vicinity it could have fallen or been thrown from.
 
Cool - I'd love to have seen that. I'd be tempted to file that under "ice falls"

1. What was the weather like? Here it hasn't snowed and it has been largely below zero all day which I'd imagien would help with high altitude ice formation.

2. You say you were on a balcony so how high is the building you are in and surrounding buildings and how far from the bus at the time.

I'd certainly like to think it was an anomalous ice fall as otherwise some loon has a largish catapult and is firing dangerously large pieces of ice into the sky!!
 
Perhaps it fell off the roof of a passing lorry?
Lorries can carry snow for a large distance before it falls off - perhaps the lorry had come from an area of heavy snow?
 
Talking of snow..why does it never frelling snow in Hounslow, West London? Even when it snows in the rest of London it never snows here. I remember once leaving Twickenham in two inches of snow, and twenty minutes later arriving in a snowless Hounslow. Why???!!!!! Is it the proximity of Heathrow? Is it because last time it really snowed here I made an obscene snowman (I was a student, it had to be done). Or is all our snow falling as random snowballs in other parts of the country? (See, I got back ontopic.)
 
ice ball

Err eheheheh :|
Mighty_Emperor "I'd certainly like to think it was an anomalous ice fall as otherwise some loon has a largish catapult and is firing dangerously large pieces of ice into the sky!!"
:?
"FOUR!!!"
 
Holy cow. I haven't posted on here in a while.

Anyhow, maybe someone had saved up some snowballs to chuck off a nearby roof at buses. My aunt's done that with hail before...back when she liked creeping people out ;)

If it were an ice fall, how would it come at the bus at such an angle?
 
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