Ice one! Walker discovers 10ft-wide, spinning frozen circle in British waters for the first time
For the first time an ice circle has been found in Britain.
The giant spinning ice disc, which normally occurs in much cooler waterways, has been spotted on a river in Devon.
The rare phenomenon are normally associated with the waterways of North America and Scandinavia.
It is believed the circles form when a slow-moving river creates an eddy, which is a circular movement of water causing a small whirlpool.
It is in this that a rotating disc of ice then grinds out its edges thus forming a gap between it and the surrounding ice.
Roy Jefferies was walking his dog along the River Otter, near Honiton during last week’s sub-zero temperatures when he made the startling find.
Mr Jefferies was so amazed by what he saw that he called friend Graham Blissett, who has a keen interest in phenomena of this kind.
Both men were amazed by the slowly-rotating 10ft-wide and perfectly circular phenomenon which was stationary in the current. It was about 6ft from the bank near where a stream joined the river.
Mr Blissett said such discs were ‘very, very rare’ and he had never heard of one forming in England before.
‘I couldn’t believe it when he told me,’ Mr Blissett said.
He grabbed his camera and raced to the river, where he captured photographs of the ice disc.
‘I saw the most perfect circle of ice about 6ft from the edge of the bank,’ said Mr Blissett.
‘It was about 10ft in diameter and, on timing it, we discovered it was completing a revolution in four minutes and ten seconds.
‘The air temperature at the time was sub-zero and the weather had been bitterly cold for the past week.’
Mr Blissett said such discs usually varied in diameter but some in Sweden had been recorded at more than 600m wide.
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This is so cool!