Beach on the Baltic island of Öland off Sweden’s southeastern coast.
The ice balls likely form when rolls of light snow are blown from the shore into water which is at or just below freezing, but fails to form uniform ice due to strong winds. The rolls of snow are then tossed about in the chilly waters, where wave action eventually shapes them into balls of ice. It is possible that rolls of snow near the shore remained soft due to warmth emanating up from the ground, which could have then been blown into the water by the strong winds.Once formed, the balls likely came back to shore and, rather than floating out to open water, remained there due to a change in sea conditions in the days before the ice balls were discovered.
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