Residents of the Scottish village of Busby, located in East Renfrewshire, were shocked after a huge chunk of ice fell into their garden on the morning of September 26, 2017, forming a massive crater.
During breakfast, the Helliwell family heard a whistle and then a loud explosion that shook all the walls. Looking out the window, they found on the lawn behind the house a deep hole about one and a half meters in diameter with white stones scattered over the grass.
“I was sitting at the table, I heard an explosion and felt the house shaking,” said Eleanor Stephen, a friend of the hostess. "When I went downstairs and touched the white fragments, I realized that it was ice."
Lindsay Helliwell, 41, who lives with her husband Ross, 51, and two daughters, Eliza, 9, and Nuala, 13, said she was overjoyed that no one was in the garden at the time.
“If it was Saturday or Sunday, the kids could play football there, or my oldest daughter would play with our dog Harper,” added Lindsay, who asked meteorologists for clarification after the incident.
Experts suggested that the ice could have fallen from a plane flying by. The ice crust, which forms at high altitudes on the airplane's body, breaks down when it sinks into warmer layers of the air.
However, this kind of event is very rare. Compared to the number of flights in UK airspace of about 2.5 million per year, the Civil Aviation Authority reported only 25 ice falls.
Scientists around the world continue to investigate this phenomenon, as reports of falling pieces of ice appeared before the invention of aircraft.
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Voronina Svetlana