Thanks for taking the time to respond, Itellsya. I appreciate the feedback. Here are some follow up comments...
{snip}
Yeah, I searched through as well and didn't find any specific regarding 'massive hunks ice'. Closest I could find was this from 2014-07-14:
So, not exactly massive hunks of ice but will fall referenced. I think I may have been more or less recalling some the day after tomorrow discussions. I'll continue looking through articles for any reference. Below is one I found on SOTT with interesting possibilities.
Well... we do get atmospheric rivers here in Northern California every season. I was mostly using them as an analogy between my hypothesis (which could very well be half-baked ) and how large amounts of ice could form and fall from the sky. I'll try to clarify a little more below...
Yes, I've read about this as well. I did find this article that provides some plausibility to large amounts of falling ice forming: Mystery of the monster hailstones -- Sott.net
Also, info on winter inversions from Wikipedia:
So I guess to clarify my hunch - could certain inversion conditions with the formation of hoarfrost and wild fluctuations in temperatures be a catalyst for large amounts of ice to form rapidly in the sky? Maybe?
{snip}
Well, it's an interesting idea that does appear to have some validity. I'm reminded of the news report (posted below) from February 2018 about a block of ice that fell from the sky nearly hitting a street cleaner, and, luckily, the incident was caught on video. Even the aviation authority speculated it could have been due to meteorological phenomenon.
At the end of the SOTT article there are links to other suspected events too.
Block of ice falls from sky landing metres from London street cleaner (VIDEO)
Chris Baynes
The Independent
Mon, 12 Feb 2018 20:37 UTC
© Bloomfield Executive Cars
The ice landed metres from a street cleaner.
A CCTV camera captured the moment a block of ice plummeted from the sky, narrowly missing a street cleaner.
Council worker Serhiy Myeshkov said he felt lucky to be alive after the sheet of ice smashed on the road metres away from him.
It is thought to have fallen from a plane flying overheard.
© Bloomfield Executive Cars
The ice smashed into pieces in North Road.
Mr Myeshkov was working in Kew, west London, under the busy Heathrow flight path when the ice crashed down nearby.
He told the Richmond and Twickenham Times: "I was sweeping on the other side of the road, then heard a loud boom.
"A piece of ice, maybe 10kg big, fell from either a plane or from the sky. It all happened very quickly.
"I wasn't scared, but it could kill you. I feel lucky."
The falling ice was captured on a taxi firm's security camera at 9am on Wednesday.
Employee Amir Khan, 39, told the Evening Standard: "It was like the start of a disaster movie, like The Day After Tomorrow.
"It made such a loud noise like a meteorite crashing down. The street cleaner was so confused and scared. Everyone came running out to look at the sky. It was crazy."
A spokesman for the CAA said: "Although ice does very occasionally fall from aircraft, it can also be the result of meteorological phenomena.
"We receive around 30 reported ice falls every year, although we are not certain how many of these incidents are the result of ice falling from an aircraft."And from Sky News:
It is understood they can be caused by leaks from planes or when ice forms on planes at higher altitudes and breaks off in warmer air.
A Civil Aviation Authority spokesman said: "Ice falls can be as a result of meteorological phenomena, however ice falls from aircraft are considered to be rare in UK airspace.
© @huldatheprophet
Onlookers took photos of the smashed ice block
Comment: The comments from the aviation authority hint at it being a meteorological phenomenon, and when we take into account the very dramatic changes occurring in our environment, it's possible these 'ice from the sky' reports may hint at the cooling of our planet:
- Chunk of ice, megacryometeor, falls from sky mysteriously crashing through Chicago man's ceiling
- Chunk of ice fell from the sky and shocked local residents
- Block of ice weighing 30kg falls from the sky in India
- 50-pound Ice Chunks Fall From Sky
- Mysterious chunks of ice fall from sky near Los Angeles in clear weatherAnd so, whilst some of these events can be attributed to airplanes dumping waste tanks, they're often easy to distinguise because they use a blue tinted disinfectant. They're also apparently not in the habit of doing it over populated areas.
About how megacryometeors form, on Wiki we can read:
Megacryometeor
A megacryometeor is a very large chunk of ice which, despite sharing many textural, hydro-chemical, and isotopic features detected in large hailstones, is formed under unusual atmospheric conditions which clearly differ from those of the cumulonimbus cloud scenario (i.e. clear-sky conditions). They are sometimes called huge hailstones, but do not need to form under thunderstorm conditions. Jesús Martínez-Frías, a planetary geologist and astrobiologist at Institute of Geosciences (Spanish: Instituto de Geociencias, IGEO) in the Spanish National Research Council (Spanish: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, CSIC)[1] in Madrid, pioneered research into megacryometeors in January 2000 after ice chunks weighing up to 6.6 pounds (3.0 kg) rained on Spain out of cloudless skies for ten days.
Mass and size
More than 50 megacryometeors have been recorded since the year 2000. They vary in mass between 0.5 kilograms (1.1 lb) to several tens of kilograms. One in Brazil weighed in at more than 50 kilograms (110 lb).[2] Chunks about 2 m (6 ft 7 in) in size fell in Scotland on 13 August 1849.[3]
Formation
The process that creates megacryometeors is not completely understood, mainly with respect to the atmospheric dynamics necessary to produce them. They may have a similar mechanism of formation to that leading to production of hailstones.[4] Scientific studies show that their composition matches normal tropospheric rainwater for the areas in which they fall. In addition, megacryometeors display textural variations of the ice and hydro-chemical and isotopic heterogeneity, which evidence a complex formation process in the atmosphere.[5][6][7] It is known that they do not form from airplane toilet leakage because the large chunks of ice that occasionally do fall from airliners are distinctly blue due to the disinfectant used (hence their common name of "blue ice").
Some have speculated that these ice chunks must have fallen from aircraft fuselages[4] after plain water ice accumulating on those aircraft through normal atmospheric conditions has simply broken loose. However, similar events occurred prior to the invention of aircraft.[8][9] Studies indicate that fluctuations in tropopause, associated with hydration of the lower stratosphere and stratospheric cooling, can be related to their formation.[5] A detailed micro-Raman spectroscopic study made it possible to place the formation of the megacryometeors within a particular range of temperatures: −10 to −20 °C (14 to −4 °F).[10] They are sometimes confused with meteors because they can leave small impact craters.
What's interesting is that these events that may be megacryometeors or similar seem to often occur during clear skies.
It's also interesting you mention atmospheric inversions because, whilst i haven't come across many stories of megacryometeors or similar - although one article claimed there's been at least 100 events in the past 50+ years - there is quite a bit of evidence of various other kinds of atmospheric phenomenon that's attributed to these inversions or the overall cooling of the atmosphere. One would suspect that it's not 'just' temperature, as such, but that cometary dust and electrical charge has something to do with all these phenomena, too.
Wiki has some info about inversion and associated phenomena:
Inversion (meteorology) - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Wave propagation
Light
As the temperature of air increases, the index of refraction of air decreases, a side effect of hotter air being less dense. Normally this results in distant objects being shortened vertically, an effect that is easy to see at sunset where the sun is visible as an oval. In an inversion, the normal pattern is reversed, and distant objects are instead stretched out or appear to be above the horizon, leading to the phenomenon known as a Fata Morgana or mirage.
Inversions can magnify the so-called "green flash"—a phenomenon occurring at sunrise or sunset, usually visible for a few seconds, in which the sun's green light is isolated due to dispersion. The shorter wavelength is refracted most, so it is the first or last light from the upper rim of the solar disc to be seen.[citation needed]
Here's a story from 2018: Rare green flash sunset photographed flickering into even rarer blue in Norway - and there a few more examples of the green flash that can be found at the link.
Another related inversion phenomena seems to be Fata Morgana, Fata Morgana? 'Ghost City' mirage filmed over lake in China.
Fata morgana and inversion - wiki:
The optical phenomenon occurs because rays of light are bent when they pass through air layers of different temperatures in a steep thermal inversion where an atmospheric duct has formed.[1] (A thermal inversion is an atmospheric condition where warmer air exists in a well-defined layer above a layer of significantly cooler air. This temperature inversion is the opposite of what is normally the case; air is usually warmer close to the surface, and cooler higher up.)
Anyway, i'm glad you brought it up because it's certainly something to be aware of, and after looking into a bit more, i will have a better idea of what to keep an eye out for! It also seems to me that there's more to be discovered about the phenomena so it'll be interesting to see what other information is out there.
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