Europe's Inexplicable
Icefalls
by Scott
Corrales
The 1930's were one of the 20th centuries most turbulent decades--kicking
off with a world in the midst of economic depression, the sharp divide between
democracy, fascism and communism, and ending in all-out warfare. While the pages
of history are devoted to the famous--and infamous--names of that time, there
are other names which will probably pass from memory at some point in the coming
century. One of them is that of Hans Hoerbiger, the Austrian proponent of the
Wel theory--"The Eternal Ice", a belief fostered as official by Nazi
Germany.
Much has been written about Horbiger elsewhere, but in a nutshell, his
theory postulated that our planet had endured the acquisition and loss of a
number of moons, and that each of these periods had ended in enormous ice
showers as the outer shells of these moons plunged into the Earth's atmosphere.
The ice showers would be followed by larger meteors of ore and iron. Hoerbiger's
disciples, such as Hans Bellamy, employed this fanciful theory as a "vindication
of the cosmogonic myths in the Book of Genesis" (which is, indeed, the subtitle
of Bellamy's own text on the subject.
We now know that the surface of the Moon--Hoerbiger's "planet Luna"--is
not made of ice, although the exciting news about this substance's discovery in
deep polar craters recently made the news. The urge to play devil's advocate
becomes irresistible, however, when strange chunks of ice begin plummeting into
our atmosphere and leaving scientists bewildered. Could Hoerbiger have been onto
something, after all?
Ice in Spain
In the month of January 2000, when chunks of ice--some of them weighing
more than just a few pounds--began peppering the southern and western regions of
Spain, known for their mild weather and fine beaches, people began to wonder if
something wasn't seriously amiss. Certainly, France had experienced a terrible
winter storm the previous month,
which caused untold damage in Paris and Versailles, and north-central
Spain had undergone snow related hardships. But this was something utterly
new.
The first few icefalls were overlooked as mere "flukes" or curiosities:
the ice blocks which fell on Soria on January 8th and in Seville on the 10th
barely made it into the news (despite the latter projectile weighing in at a
healthy 1.8 kilograms).But on January 13, 2000, headlines across Spain trumpeted
the discovery of an enigmatic chunk of ice measuring 13 centimeters across and
weighing over a pound. The celestial missile's trajectory led it to punch a hole
in the zinc roof of an industrial warehouse belonging to the Viferma Corporation
in that town of L'Alcudia (Valencia). The mega-hailstone's destructiveness would
have been completely overlooked during a hailstorm, particularly during the
winter months, but the intruder had appeared out of the clear blue Mediterranean
sky. Workers in the industrial warehouse heard an explosion at around 11:00 am,
followed by a shower of zinc fragments from the roof above. A closer inspection
revealed that the icy projectile had encrusted itself between the shattered zinc
roof and an I-beam, from where it was carefully removed and placed in a
refrigerator. Some employees expressed the belief that the unwelcome guest could
have been much larger, given the fragments of ice visible on the floor below and
scattered on the intact part of the roof. A spokesman for the local weather
bureau (Centro Meteorologico de Valencia) ordered that the fragment be placed in
a clean container and preserved until one of their representatives could collect
it for investigation. The explanation issued at the moment was that the "object
was of possible cometary origin".
Within twenty-four hours, reports were being received from the village of
La Unión in Murcia, where another large ice rock had fallen behind a local bar.
The National Police dutifully picked up the object and forwarded it for
study.
In a matter of days, the Spanish icefalls had gone from curiosity to news
item and from there to the outskirts of panic: on January 16, 2000, the ABC
newspaper reported that the eight such chunk of cosmic ice had fallen in
downtown Cádiz, striking the ground on La Palma street at 3:30 in the
afternoon--a time and place where one or more people could have been seriously
injured or killed.
The following day, another large chunk of ice would strike the Valencia
region, this time in the town of Albalat de la Ribera. The object in this
incident was described as having "the size of a basketball" and to have fallen
on a local road joining the communities of Sueca and Algemesa. In this event,
two teenagers driving along the road collected the object and preserved it until
experts could come for it.The phenomenon was by no means over. On January 17th,
the media reported that two more "frigoliths"--as they were now being
called--had fallen on Huelva and Albacete. Scientists, who had drawn battle
lines regarding their provenance of the phenomenon, were more divided than ever
and helpless. The citizens fo the
towns of Tocina (Sevilla), L'Alcudia (Valencia), La Union (Murcia), Meliana,
Enguera (Valencia) and Xilxes (Castellon) anxiously awaited the results for the
analyses conducted on the objects fallen on their respective communities
On February 1, 2000, the owner of a dwelling located at #87 Bruc Street
in Barcelona was startled to find a 1250 kilogram chunk of ice on her terrace,
according to sources of the Urban Police which assumed custody of the object.
The chunk of ice remained at police headquarters in Barcelona until it was
forwarded to Madrid at noon for further study.
Grappling with the complex matter of the ice showers fell to the
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones (CSIC), a government agency, and one
of its first assignments was to keep the situation under control and within
logical guidelines. Geologist Jesús Martínez Frias, who was in charge of
collecting most of these ice fragments from the affected areas, stated that he
was "the
Not all members of Spain's scientific establishment were so sanguine
about a possible extraplanetary origin to the ice. In fact, most adhered to the
highly skeptical position best exemplified by that of Javier Armentia, director
of the Pamplona Planetarium and a well-known UFO skeptic. "I'm convinced that
part of these phenomena are little more than pranks. In other words, that
following the falls of one or two ice fragments,there was a wave effect, similar
to what happens with UFOs."
Francisco Anguita, dean of Petrology and Geochemistry at Madrid's
Unversidad Complutense, also came out in favor of a non-extraplanetary origin
for the frigoliths.
Italian Ices
The backdrop for the events would soon change from one Mediterranean view
to another. On January 28, another block of ice weighing 2 kilograms in a
Salesian monastery in the town of L'Aquila, an event preceded by similar
icefalls in the Campania region
According to the Italian NTX news agency, the magistrate's office in the
city of Ancona initiated an investigation after a 24 year old worker was injured
after being hit by a block weighing approximately 1 kilogram. Physicist
Giancarlo Tebaldi of Milan's Hygiene and Prevention Institute expressed their
belief that ice is was a result of the same storms that ravaged France in
December during one of the worst
natural disasters in that country's history. The Veneto Region
Environmental Agency's studies proved the blocks to be made of a "material
similar to distilled water, in other words, lacking any salts whatsoever,and
with traces of ammonia and nitrates," and
discarded the possibility that the chunks of ice could be
radioactive.
Ufologist Eufemio Del Buono, however, stated that the ice "is a warning
from extraterrestrial intelligences". A
sorcerer named Alex from the city of Genova, told radio stations that
these were really fireballs sent to destroy the world, but they turned into ice
balls upon making contact with the Earth's atmosphere.
On the other side of the world from Europe, less attention was commanded
by a shower of large blocks of ice which completely destroyed croplands to the
north of Bogotá, Colombia, on March 17th,2000. The ice storm, complete with
hurricane-strength winds, laid waste the agricultural community of Oiba (some
120 miles from Bogota), shearing the roofs of the peasantry's fragile homes and
killing all types of animals. Primitivo Báez, a spokesman for the mayor's
office, told reporters for Associated Press that "the ground looked as if it had
been scorched by a huge fire." The unusual weather event, which lasted three
hours, left in its wake large blocks of ice littered over a 200 hectare-wide
area. According to Báez, the damage to cash crops such as coffee, sugarcane and
yucca was such that farmers were forced to uproot any surviving plants and
re-plant them.
"The event was so sudden," stated Báez in the March 19 AP newswire, "that
birds were unable to fly away from the hurricane-strength winds and the ice.
They died on the ground, as did the chickens. Only some animals which managed to
find shelter beneath trees escaped injury."
Colombia had experienced unusually powerful hailstorms before, mostly
attributed to the "La Niña" meteorological phenomenon, but as in Europe, there
was no explanation for the sudden icy destruction.
Scientists on Ice
While scientists stared at each other like gunslingers at sundown, the
frigoliths continued to fall, this time far from the Mediterranean "theater":
residents of the Dutch cities of Groningen, Hoogeveen, Veendam and Zoutkamp were
startled to find huge chunks of ice--of the same size and characteristics of the
Iberian and Italian ones--sitting in their back yards. A scientist from the
University of Groningen, Dr. Theo Jurriens, investigated these occurrences and
reached a preliminary verdict of "drinking water from an unknown source."
Spain's Instituto del Frío (Cold Research Institute) and the
National Institute of Meteorology were entrusted the task of determining the
frigoliths' provenance and nature. This apparently straightforward assignment
would soon deteriorate into a battle of opposing factions that would end with
the firing of the director in charge of one of these agencies.
The bureaucratic handling of the specimens was part of the problem: time
slowly passed between delivery of the objects by the National Police to the
CSIC, and thence to the interdisciplinary working group led by meteorologist
Luis Muñosiguren. Efforts at shoehorning the phenomenon into a strictly
meteorological framework began from the start, even when Muñosiguren stated that
there was no evidence pointing to a natural meteorological phenomenon at work in
the creation of the frigoliths. "We don't know of any scientific mechanism which
provides a basis for such a phenomenon." The meteorologist pointed to the fact
that the Earth's stratosphere, where the frigoliths almost surely formed,
contains very little water vapor--the crucial element in their formation.
"Normal detection equipment does not detect water vapor concentrations in the
atmosphere, where the normal concentrations are so low as to be nonexistent."
Chemical analyses ultimately proved that the Spanish ice bombs were made of
ordinary H2O with trace minerals, ammonia (NH4) and low levels of silica
(SiO2).
However, some things were made clear during the January 21st "summit".
The experts agreed that the objects had no connection whatsoever to high flying
aircraft or liquid discharges from airliners; they discarded the possibility of
their being aeroliths or meteorites, and agreed that whatever they were, they
were unrelated to any conventional atmospheric processes. Scientists also
confessed not knowing what manner of air currents would allow vast quantities of
ice to remain aloft, calling attention to the 100 pound ice missile that fell in
Brazil in 1998, or the three-foot wide block of ice that bombarded China in
1995.
In an op-ed piece written for Spain's Karma-7 magazine, Carlos González
Cutre, a meteorologist with the Spanish Air Force, discussed the various forces
at work in the troposphere and stratosphere, emerging at the end with a highly
disturbing conjecture: what if, suggests González, we are dealing with a
gigantic mass of ice floating in the darkness of space, shedding chunks of
material every time Earth's gravitational pull reaches out to it with invisible
fingers?
A notion worthy of Charles Fort himself.
Those Who Forget the Past...
The media and academe alike treated the Western Mediterranean icefalls
with the level of concern usually reserved for completely new--and even a tad
ominous--phenomena. A world in recovery from Pre-Millennial tension perhaps
deserved better, but the fact remained that such icefalls were quite a common
occurrence, and not just in the casebooks of Charles Fort.
According to Fortean researcher Thanassis Vembos, a similar phenomenon
had been visited upon Greece in 1988, when an object crashed to earth in an
empty field near the town of Chalkoutsi, 30 miles north of Athens. One local
resident claimed having witnessed the descent to earth of a large dark mass "the
size of a human body" shortly before noon on January 4th. The unknown object's
impact threw up large amounts of mud into the air as a small crater was formed.
Authorities reporting to the location would later discover a lump of ice almost
a foot in diameter, which appeared to be a perfectly normal in all respects.
Subsequent chemical analyses confirmed its normalcy, adding that the object was
made of frozen chlorinated water. Vembos, whose report appeared in
Strange (#6--1990), tied the incident in with other unusual phenomena
being experienced in the Eastern Mediterranean at the time: mysterious aerial
booms ("skyquakes"), earthquakes and a UFO flap. Nor was this the first time
that such events had occurred in Greece: In September 1980, a 10 pound block of
ice fell on the village of Chiona
in the Peloponnese, where a similar block of ice had fallen in 1976. Cold
comfort, indeed.