VLADIVOSTOK, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- Want to pick a snowball fight? You may want to come to the Nyda village in the Gulf of Ob in northern Russia where nature has prepared a collection of snowballs for you.
It was in late October that villagers of Nyda, which is located just above the Arctic Circle, found thousands of snowballs on the beach. Some are the size of tennis balls and others are as large as a basketball, according to the Siberian Times.
"We have them only in one place. It is as if someone spilled them," local resident Ekaterina Chernykh was quoted as saying by the Siberian Times.
Although those snowballs look like man-made, similar to some kinds of sculpture exhibition, they are entirely natural.
"It is a rare natural phenomenon. As a rule, grease forms first, 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," spokesman for the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute Sergey Lisenkov told the Siberian Times.
"When the water in the gulf rose, it came into contact with the frost. The beach began to be covered with ice. Then when the water slowly retreated, the ice remained. Its pieces were rolling over in the wet sand, and turned into these balls," he explained.
