Egg-shaped Balls Made Out of Ice Covered a Beach in Finland
Mother nature can amaze, and sometimes it even go the extra mile to both confound and delight us in equal measures.
That’s the case with the magical egg-shaped spheres of ice that showed up on a beach off the coast of Finland, likely formed by rough water near the shore breaking up a layer of slushy ice, according to CNN. The slush then stuck together and continued to build in supercooled water while the waves caused the ice to spin around and form into smooth balls.
"This was [an] amazing phenomenon, [I've] never seen before," a local visitor told CNN. "The whole beach was full of these ice balls."
The hauntingly beautiful piles of round, icy balls formed on the beaches of Hailuoto, an island in the Gulf of Bothnia between Finland and Sweden in the north Baltic Sea.
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A post shared by Sirpa Tero (@sirpatero) on Nov 6, 2019 at 7:24am PST
Visitor Sirpa Tero, who posted several photos of the icy phenomenon to Instagram, told CNN that while she has seen these balls form before, it has never been on such a large area — they seemed to go on for miles.
The island itself sits off the coast of Oulu, Finland’s fourth largest city, and can be reached by a ferry in the summer or an ice road in the winter, according to a Finland tourism site.
And with its changing colors, fall — or ruska, as it’s known — is a great time to visit Finland, which happens to be the happiest country on earth (it was voted the happiest by the annual World Happiness Report for the second year in a row). The country is also one of the best for solo travelers, with more than 3 million traditional saunas, it's a great place to meet fellow travelers and locals.
Finnish people consider fall a time to take a step back and a cleansing breath, take in a hike in the crisp air and wait for winter, according to the tourism site. Not to mention, it’s also when Northern Lights season starts.
So what are you waiting for? Fall is one of the cheapest times to fly to Europe, giving you plenty of time to check out this natural icy marvel as well as the rest of the Nordic country.
