May showers not only bring flowers, but also volleyball-sized chunks of ice falling from clear blue skies. In May, The Province, CTV, and other news outlets reported the story of a Delta resident witnessing large chunks of ice falling from the sky like “artillery shells”.

The largest of the ice balls was reportedly the size of a volleyball, and created a small crater about six inches deep, and a foot in diameter. Estimates of the damages caused to residential property are in the $15,000 range.

Although initial reports suggest the ice could have come from a passing airplane overhead, witnesses specifically claim they did not see any planes, or exhaust from planes overhead at the time of the incident. The Meteorological Service of Canada is now taking steps to liaise with Delta police to re-locate the samples from a freezer to an Environment Canada lab in North Vancouver, where they will undergo scientific analysis.

A scientific research team in Spain, hosted by TIERRA: Thematic Network of Earth Sciences in Spain, describe the phenomena as ‘extreme atmospheric events (Megacryometeors) that could be a new type of fingerprint (geoindicator) of Climate Change’. The team claims that “tropospheric Global Warming (and mainly Stratospheric Cooling) might be making the tropopause colder, moister and more turbulent, creating conditions in which ice crystals could grow, forming, unusually and much more recurrently, large ice conglomerations”.

ACT has been in touch with the scientists who will be studying the megacryometeors to analyze their composition, and looks forward to reporting on the outcome of the analysis when it become available!