Mysterious Ice Chunk Crashes Into Chicago Home
Skies were clear Wednesday night
By ANDREW GREINER
Updated 3:26 PM CST, Thu, Nov 5, 2009
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating whether or not a chunk of blue ice that fell from the sky Wednesday night and damaged a North Side home could have come from a plane.
The mysterious projectile dropped like a stone around 7:52 p.m. and crash-landed into Paul Dowd’s house on the 4200 block of North Wolcott Avenue.
"We heard a big boom. I thought it was an explosion. I thought a car blew up. The whole house shook," Dowd said. "And I looked outside. I thought it was the "L," or something that, I don't know, exploded, or whatever."
"It wasn't until I saw bright lights and squad cars out in the street that I realized something bad had happened," said Dowd's neighbor, Steve Martin.
There seems to be no natural explanation for the ice. Nary a storm was reported in the Chicago area and skies appeared to be clear.
The home is located beneath a flight path sometimes used for planes coming out of O’Hare.
Radar tapes from O'Hare will be looked at, FAA spokesman Tony Molinaro said, to see if any planes were making an approach to the airport around that exact time. If any planes are found, Molinaro said the owners of those planes will be contacted and asked to check their aircraft for any signs of water leakage.
"From our point of view, it's more preventative. We want to be sure that it doesn't happen again to their planes," Molinaro said.
The second possibility, and one that is more difficult to prove, is that an aircraft flying at a very high altitude, where temperatures are much lower than they are on the ground, traveled through some moisture. Ice that could have formed on the fuselage of the plane could have broken loose as the aircraft descended.
First Published: Nov 5, 2009 9:47 AM CST
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