The Snowballs Nobody Made
On some winter mornings, people wake up to find fields covered in hundreds of snowballs, some as big as barrels, with long tracks behind them. No one has made them.
What was reported
Snow rollers look like giant snowballs or rolls of carpet made of snow, often hollow in the middle. They appear in fields, on hillsides and frozen lakes, sometimes by the hundred, each with a trail behind it showing where it rolled.
When people find them, they're often baffled, wondering if someone came in the night to make them. They've been reported in the American Midwest, Britain and elsewhere.
Explanations offered
They're made by the wind. They need a thin layer of wet, sticky snow on top of a harder, icy layer, and a strong wind. The wind lifts an edge of the top layer and rolls it along, picking up more snow like a rolling carpet. The inner layers are weaker and often blow away, leaving a hole.
- When
- Seen rarely, in very particular weather
- Where
- Ohio, USA
- Witnesses
- Farmers and residents in snowy regions
- Status
- Explained
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.
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