MODESTO, Calif. (AP) — A loud crash startled a California family at home Wednesday morning when a chunk of ice the size of a basketball hurdled from the sky and smashed through the roof, likely the result of frozen moisture breaking loose from an airplane flying high overhead.
Monica Savath said she and her family were in the living room of their Modesto home when they were shaken by the commotion. She said it sounded like a bomb exploding. Running to the attached garage, they found a gaping hole in the roof and shattered ice. Nobody was injured.
“What on earth happened?” Savath said in an interview with KOVR-TV.
Jim Mathews, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento, dismissed any meteorological explanation, given the area’s clear blue skies and hot temperatures. He said an airplane is the most likely culprit and suspects the same moisture that creates long white trails behind jets can collect into a large ice block. One may have dislodged from a plane and found its way to the family’s home, he said.
Pieces of the ice in the Savath home were white or clear. Its color ruled out the possibility that it was waste that leaked from an airplane, which is blue from chemicals used to flush airplane toilets.
Modesto is in the grips of a heatwave with the high temperature hitting 104, which adds to the mystery. Mathews said temperatures high in the jet stream are very cold, and it probably fell so quickly that it didn’t melt much on its way down.
“Good thing it didn’t hit anybody,” he said. “Boy, that could really do a number.”
Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said an inspector visited the family’s home. Gregor said he had no immediate answers.
Neighbor Lisa Lawrence said she was outside smoking a cigarette when she heard a whizzing sound and saw the debris the size of a basketball.
“Sounded like a jet, actually,” she said. “That’s what made me look up, and I was like, if that’s a jet, it’s travelling pretty low.”
