Mystery as chunk of ice falls from the sky onto Aussie golf course
Workers at the Belvoir Park Golf Club in Victoria huddled around the discovery early on Tuesday morning wondering where the hell it came from.
Workers at a golf course in Victoria were stumped on Tuesday morning when one discovered a mystery chunk of ice on the green.
A large indent in the ground beneath the icy mess is what really baffled employees at Belvoir Park Golf Club, located about 20 minutes from Bendigo, who believe the ice had fallen from a plane in the sky.
Greenskeeper Dylan Knight was one of six who crowded around the ice after it was discovered at 7am on Tuesday. They all wondered what it was and where it came from.
"We were definitely baffled for sure," Dylan told Yahoo News Australia. "Between the six of us there at the time the only conclusion we got is that it [had fallen] from an aeroplane"."
Jan, another worker, jokingly told Yahoo her first thought was that a golfer snuck in with an Esky through the night.
Workers stumped by mysterious find
Photos shared with Yahoo show a chunk of ice scattered across the ground after being broken into smaller pieces. "The pieces spread over the green are in size 3-6 inches (7-16 cm) for perspective," Dylan said.
A patch of grass is also visible and appears damaged by the impact, but "minimal damage in the scheme of things".
It had been a frosty morning at the golf club — a cool -1 degree Celsius, Jan told Yahoo. But it hadn't snowed, so the discovery was a mystery. Dylan said they were finding ice spread a distance of 50 metres which appears to have come from a single chunk.
In his 17 years in the industry, Dylan said he's never discovered such a thing. Although he has found fish in random places from birds dropping them on the greens, he told the ABC.
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What exactly is the rare phenomenon?
As strange as it might sound, ice falling from planes is not completely unheard of. According to Heathrow Airport in London, an average of 25 ice fall incidents are reported across the UK every year.
But there's also a weather phenomenon known as megacryometeors which sees large chunks of ice form and fall unexpectedly. While similar to hailstones, which are created in thunderstorms, megacryometeors are believed to form from the accumulation and freezing of moisture in the upper atmosphere.
Aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas said it's common for ice to form on planes flying between 20,000 and 25,000 in icy conditions. "That same ice can and does fall to earth, and depending on the conditions at the time, if it is extremely cold, then that would stay as a chuck of ice until it hit the ground," he said, ABC reported.
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