Nature surprises environmentalists – Giant snowballs appear on a beach

The locals in the village of Nyda say they have never seen anything like this in the past. Some of the snowballs, which are spread across 18 km area, are as big as 1 meter in diameter. They simply look wondrous. Environmentalists were quick in saying that such phenomena is caused by a rare environmental process. According to them, this happens when small pieces of ice are rolled by wind and water. However, no one is able to say exactly what makes that “rare environmental process” to take place.  Of course, not all believe in their explanation.

A strange and beautiful sight greeted locals in the Gulf of Ob, in northwest Siberia, after thousands of natural snowballs formed on the beach. An 11-mile (18km) stretch of coast was covered in the icy spheres. The sculptural shapes range from the size of a tennis ball to almost 1m (3ft) across. –http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37883003

Some are perfectly baseball-sized, while many others are much larger (and perhaps, better-suited for building snowmen). The snowballs appeared on a beach on the Gulf of Ob, in Russia’s Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous region, far, far to the north in Siberia. –Rare weather spawns thousands of giant snowballs on Siberian beach – CTV News

November 7, 2016 6:50 AM EST – Thousands of giant ice spheres formed on a beach in a remote Russian village around 900 miles northwest of Novosibirsk, Siberia… –Rare giant snowballs form on Siberian beach – Washington Post