Baffling ‘crop circles’ frozen into surface of Alabama creek
Mysterious swirls found atop a frozen Alabama creek have challenged meteorologists and rattled social media, with some likening the formations to alien-created crop circles.
The hypnotic spirals were discovered Feb. 18 spread across Anderson Creek, a 180-metrewide tributary of the Tennessee River in north Alabama.
Wynelle Kirkham of Rogersville, 70 kilometres west of Huntsville, shared multiple photos of the circles on Facebook, with only a one word comment: “Wow!”
“First thing I do in the mornings when I get up is open our shutters to look at the water from our bedroom window. I was so surprised,” Kirkham told McClatchy News.
“It appeared a bit frightening, since we had no idea what caused it. We quickly went outside onto our deck and then to our lower deck to see this amazing sight. It looked like crop circles you might see when you are looking from an airplane.”
The Kirkham home sits atop a 18-metre bluff, giving her an aerial vantage point. Her photos show the designs were spread as far as she could see, with the circles starting big then growing progressively smaller, like the rings on a bull’s eye.
It didn’t take long for local TV stations to pick up on the mystery, resulting in 13,000 reactions, nearly 700 comments and 2,500 shares. Some people said the circles had to be manmade, while others suggested — or maybe joked — aliens were involved.
“Crop circles on ice,” Sam Michelle McMurrey wrote on Facebook.
Kirkham and her husband, Mark, have lived along the creek 15 years and she says this is the first time they’ve seen such formations.
WAAY 31 chief meteorologist Kate McKenna offered a couple of “theories”, while using the term “crop circles” to describe the swirls.
“I believe that near the shoreline the water is a little more shallow so it’s freezing more easily. It’s able to cool down quickly. And then the wind blows that thin sheet of ice out into the water, out into the middle the creek. And then the water near the shoreline again starts to refreeze and the wind blowing that ice out into the lake causes each layer here, each ring to form, kind of like wrings in a tree trunk,” McKenna reported.
Meteorologist James Spann, of ABC 33/40, offered a slightly different explanation in a Facebook post.
“This pattern occurs when moving water forces the forming ice to slowly rotate,” Spann wrote.