Ice Bombs – The Weather Mystery

There is perhaps no weather phenomenon more bizarre, less understood, or under-reported, than the ice bomb. In fact, it is unclear just how related to weather it even is.


What is an ice bomb? Sometimes called a megacryometeor, an ice bomb is basically a large chunk of ice falling out of the sky. By large, think perhaps 2-50 pounds, sometimes much more; something that can blast a hole in your roof several feet in diameter; something the size of a basketball or far larger, and that could, traveling at well over 100 miles per hour, damage or destroy anything (or anyone) it hits.

If you’re thinking about hail, think again. Although hailstones can indeed grow to be dangerously large, ice bombs are far larger, and often fall when the sky is perfectly clear, with no storms or even clouds anywhere near.

Ice bombs have been reported all over the world and, in spite of their relative rarity, homes and vehicles have been severely damaged, and a few people have been injured or killed. Of course, if nobody is there to witness such an event, the ice would simply melt away and leave no trace unless something was visibly damaged. So we don’t know exactly how rare it really is. It can be months between reports, but ice bombs can also occur in clusters, with multiple events happening within the space of a week or two, and within a few hundred miles of one another.

One suggestion, not unexpected, is that ice bombs could be the result of chunks of ice falling off of high flying airplanes. After all, in the U.S. alone, thousands of commercial and military aircraft typically fill the daytime and nighttime sky in virtually every part of the country. Some think it could come from ice buildup that can form on the wings, or even wastewater from malfunctioning systems within the planes. Although the FAA downplays the possibility, the issue of ice falling from planes is still the subject of heated discussion.

However, there are ice bomb events that the airplane theory simply doesn’t explain. Some events, for example, occurred prior to the invention of the airplane, with reports going back to at least the mid 1800s. In addition, some ice bombs are simply too huge, some as big as a car, to be explained by ice buildup on airplanes. Plus, in those cases where ice has been recovered and analyzed, results indicate that it does not have the characteristics of airplane wastewater.

Some people have suggested the possibility of small comets. But, in order for ice to survive the fiery dive into our atmosphere at high speeds, the chunks would have to be quite large, and would have been spotted visually or on radar, which has not been the case. And suggestions that ice bombs could be the result of unusual events in the upper stratosphere are difficult to accept, due to the lack of moisture and supporting air at such high altitudes. Moreover, some analytical results point to a tropospheric origin, the lower portion of the atmosphere below 50,000 feet.

So the search for an answer to one of weather’s most puzzling events goes on. Although we can take some comfort in the realization that the odds of ever being hit by an ice bomb are indeed astronomical, we are all forced to accept the possibility that there could be a 100 pound chunk of ice out there somewhere with our name on it.

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