[meteorite-list] Chunk of Ice Plunges Through Roof in California

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Aug 18 11:28:27 2005
Message-ID: <200508181518.j7IFIZI03543_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,166049,00.html

Chunk of Ice Plunges Through Roof
Fox News
August 17, 2005

It's a good thing Johnny Worthy got up to do the dishes.

As the Fontana, Calif., man bent over the sink, a large chunk of ice
crashed through his roof and landed in his living room.

"I just heard this tremendous boom," Lena Worthy, his 20-year-old
daughter, told the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin of Ontario, Calif. "I
thought two trucks collided on [the street]."

The house's front door blew open, and bits of ceiling tile were jammed
into the living-room wall.

"This came from a long ways up in the air," Johnny Worthy said. "You
could hear it before it got here."

The block of ice, about three feet across and four inches thick, landed
right into a often-used living-room chair.

"Anybody sitting in that chair would clearly have been maimed," said Lena.

The Worthys aren't sure where the dirty-looking chunk, about three feet
across and four inches thick, came from, though samples of it are in
their refrigerator.

"We really don't know what hit us," said Lena.

They doubt it's from an airplane, since, according to Johnny's wife,
Correan, planes don't normally fly over their house.

However, the Inland Empire region, in which Fontana squarely sits, is
part of a normal approach corridor to Los Angeles International Airport,
about 60 miles to the west.

Lena did some Internet research and discovered that large chunks of ice
called megacryometeors sometimes form in the upper atmosphere before
plunging to earth.

One crashed into a house in Florida last fall, but those giant lumps of
ice are usually rounder than the Worthys' flattened chunk.

Correan Worthy, who got home from work soon after the invasion from
above, took the fact that the chunk hit no one as a good sign.

"I just looked up and laughed," she said. "All I could say was 'Thank
you Jesus.' As often as we sit in that chair."
Received on Thu 18 Aug 2005 11:18:34 AM PDT