Thousands Of Strange Yet Beautiful Giant Snowballs Spotted In Northwest Siberia (Video)

A community in the Gulf of Ob in northwest Siberia was delighted yet surprised on the thousands of snowballs that appeared on the 11-milke (18 km) coast a week ago. The snowballs are shaped from the size of the tennis balls to almost 1m (3 ft) across.

No headhunting with these snowballs. https://t.co/mypnxd8nOF

— Mashable (@mashable) November 6, 2016

BBC reports that these snowballs are the result of a rare phenomenon or environmental process wherein small pieces of ice form are rolled by wind and water, culminating giant snowballs. The residents who saw the snowballs were astounded and said that they had never seen anything like these before.

The snowballs were seen in the Arctic circle in the small village of Nyda. The region that sits on the Gulf of Ob that has a population of more than 2,000.

These giant snowballs in Siberia are incredible https://t.co/jcinB3Gz1U — BBC Travel Show (@BBCTravelShow) November 5, 2016

Ekaterina Chernykh, a local resident described the snowballs as interesting and said that they have them only in one place as if someone spilled them. She further said that they are all of the various sizes from tennis balls to volleyballs. She also said that they were all astounded and several people believed it only when saw with their own eyes. It has not occurred in the past and there was not so much snow for them to form.

Meanwhile, Sergev Lisenkov, the spokesman for the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) said that it is the rare natural phenomenon. He further said that as a rule, grease ice forms first, slush and then a combination of the action of the wind, the outlines of the coastline, and the temperature, may lead to the formation of such balls, as noted by Siberian Times. A similar phenomenon happened in the lake of Michigan in December 2015 and in the Gulf of Finland in December 2014.