Thousands of Glorious 'Ice Eggs' Wash Up on Finnish Beach

[Judi Lynn]

By Nicoletta Lanese - Staff Writer 12 hours ago Strange News

The "ice eggs" form due to a rare weather phenomenon.



An amateur photographer photographed the "ice eggs" lining a beach in Finland.
(Image: © Risto Mattila)
Smooth balls of ice rolled ashore on a beach in Finland and piled up like a gigantic clutch of turtles' eggs.

But where did these "ice eggs" come from? Turns out, the frigid orbs were sculpted by a peculiar combination of weather and waves, according to news reports.

Amateur photographer Risto Mattila stumbled upon the strange sight while walking with his wife on Hailuoto Island, a land mass between Finland and Sweden, according to BBC News. The temperature hovered around 32 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 1 degree Celsius) that day, he said, and the wind whipped across the beach. "There, we found this amazing phenomenon. There was snow and ice eggs along the beach near the water line," he told the BBC.

The "ice eggs" littered an area the length of about one-quarter of a football field and ranged in size from that of an average chicken egg to that of a hefty soccer ball, Mattila said. He snapped a photo, noting that he had "never seen anything like this during 25 years living in the vicinity."

Others came upon the ice eggs, too. "This was [an] amazing phenomenon, [I've] never seen before. The whole beach was full of these ice balls," Tarja Terentjeff, who lives in the nearby town of Oulu, told CNN. Another local, Sirpa Tero, told CNN she'd seen icy orbs line the shoreline before, "but not over such a large area."

More:
https://www.livescience.com/ice-eggs-in-finland-beach.html

[lark]

1. So cool, lol.