[meteorite-list] Holes in ice

[Gary K. Foote]

VERY interesting Darren.  I've emailed the reporter and sent him to the URL for my search 
in a melt-hole.  I'll also be contacting Mr. Ives for his opinion too.  But the 
conditions we saw at our hunt site are exactly as stated in the article, a small man-made 
pond with steep sides - in fact very steep sides.  Surface of the pond well below the 
local water table.  Sounds like we MAY have an answer.  

Thanks for posting this.

Gary

On 1 Mar 2007 at 10:14, Darren Garrison wrote:

> http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070228/COLUMNISTS03/202280381/-1/columnists
> 
> Do holes in ice create holes in space theory? 
> 
> Published: Wednesday, February 28, 2007 
> 
> In January 2001, Susan Taylor, a research scientist at the Army Corps of
> Engineer´s Cold Regions Research Laboratory in Hanover, visited Frost Pond in
> Dublin to investigate a mysterious hole in the ice.
> 
> Local residents asked her to come because her work on snowpack research includes
> going to the South Pole to collect micro-meteorites - and they wondered whether
> the 3-foot-wide gap had been caused by incoming space debris.
> 
> Her verdict, at the time, as I reported it: Maybe.
> 
> Her verdict now, as I found when checking in again: Maybe not.
> 
> "Since then . . . I´ve heard of many more of these (mysterious holes in frozen
> ponds)," Taylor said in a phone interview last week. "I think it´s some natural
> phenomenon, but I have no idea how they´re formed."
> 
> Frequency casts doubt on the meteorite theory, Taylor said, because not many
> softball-size rocks make it through the atmosphere without burning up.
> 
> You may wonder why I´m bringing up a 5-year-old story.
> 
> Because another of those mysterious holes appeared Sunday, Feb. 18, in a small
> pond on Curtis Brook Road in Wilton.
> 
> "It´s very curious indeed - there just aren´t any tracks around it," said Nikki
> Andrews, who with her husband, David, have owned the property for nine years.
> 
> By the time they spotted the foot-wide hole it had begun to freeze over, but as
> you can see from the photo taken by a neighbor, it was still plainly visible.
> Also visible were the lack of animal and human footprints nearby - no beaver or
> ice-fishing fan made this hole - as well as odd "splash marks" that stretch out
> in several directions.
> 
> Andrews said the splash marks made "slight furrows" in the snow, leading them to
> guess that something had crashed through the ice from above.
> 
> "They´re definitely on top, and that´s what really surprised me," she said.
> 
> I got all excited about meteorite possibilities when the Andrewses first
> contacted Telegraph correspondent Jessie Salisbury, who contacted me, until
> Taylor squelched that idea.
> 
> A little Net searching found similar stories about mystery ice holes here and
> there, occasionally with real meteorites confirmed but mostly full of uninformed
> speculation (which is what we reporters do best).
> 
> I couldn´t figure out who else would have expertise: hydrologists?
> meteorologists? New Hampshire Fish & Game? The New Hampshire Mutual UFO Network
> (maybe space aliens are abducting brook trout)?
> 
> I finally fell back on the non-Internet world´s version of Web searching -
> flipping randomly through my Rolodex - and wound up talking with Wayne Ives of
> the state Department of Environmental Services´ Instream Flow Program.
> 
> Ives has spent years splashing around the Souhegan and Lamprey rivers as part of
> a project to set standards on river usage, which is how I met him, so he knows
> New Hampshire waters in winter. He was intrigued and puzzled, so I e-mailed him
> a copy of the Andrewses´ photo.
> 
> That´s when (pun alert) he threw cold water on my meteorite hopes: "That looks
> to me like a melt hole," he said.
> 
> As Ives explained it, above-freezing water flowing into a small pond can move in
> funny ways and congregate, raising the surface temperature enough to melt ice.
> Evidence in favor of this idea is the small size of the pond, which was man-made
> a couple of decades ago, and the fact that some of its banks are steep.
> 
> "I have seen it on small lakes - especially where the banks are high around it
> to get a good gradient from the shore - the possibility of a lot of groundwater
> coming in. In a shallow environment like that, it could overwhelm the system,"
> he said.
> 
> Our weird winter contributes to the possibility, said Dr. Stephen Daly of the
> Cold Regions lab.
> 
> "It was incredibly warm right up through the second week of January, with a lot
> of rain, so I think the groundwater levels got really, really high for winter .
> . .. An upwelling of groundwater could do this," he said. "The water table
> around the pond might be higher than the water surface on the pond."
> 
> This doesn´t explain splash marks, however. Here´s all I can think of: they´re
> actually signs of more melting from below. The warmer water could have oozed
> along cracks under the ice, partially melting the snow above those cracks from
> underneath in a way that looks like they were melted from above.
> 
> The Andrewses allowed a neighbor to bore a few auger holes in the ice and poke
> around in the mud at the bottom (five feet down) with a stick. Alas, no
> meteorite was found, but I haven´t given up hope.
> 
> The neighbor measured the ice at the hole and found it to be 6 inches thick,
> which seems a lot to be melted.
> 
> I think more investigation in needed. I wonder if The Telegraph will let me rent
> a miniature submarine? 
> 
> 
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