We were driving to our place at the lake this afternoon when we spied these mysterious balls of snow all over the fields! I knew right away what they were but I don’t remember ever seeing them (only in photos maybe). As soon as I got home I googled “snow balls rolling on fields” and found a good explanation on Wikipedia (hope its right)! Anyway, here is what they had to say:
“A snow roller is a rare meteorological phenomenon in which snowballs are formed naturally as chunks of snow are blown along the ground by wind, picking up snow along the way. To form, the ground must be covered by a layer of ice to which snow will not stick. The layer of ice must be covered by wet, loose snow with a temperature near the melting point of ice. The wind must be strong enough to move the snow rollers, but not strong enough to blow them too fast. The precise nature of the conditions required makes them a very rare phenomenon.”
How cool is that?
PS I’m not bragging about my photography here . . .
Wow! How lucky are you to have been able to capture THAT!! SO JEALOUS!
Jo
Those are so amazing. I would love to see them one day. I recently heard about snow tornadoes, that you can see in Winnipeg and other uber cold places, that can be up to 2 stories high – they are on my list of things I want to see as well. I can imagine that the snow rollers would take very particular and rare conditions. You are very lucky to have seen them.