Self-Rolling Giant Snowballs Form in UK

(MYFOX NATIONAL) - Rare self-rolling giant snowballs have been discovered in Somerset, England, the Telegraph reports .

Also known as giant snowrollers, snow bales and snow doughnuts, they are formed by a combination of strong winds and fresh, moist snow. They are normally found on the prairies of North America, however, Ron Trevett, 55, and his wife Aileen, 54, discovered them in a field close to their rural home in Yeovil, Somerset.

"We saw them from a distance on the ridge of the field, and we thought some kids had been playing up there and making giant snowballs," Ron Trevett said. "But when we got up there we saw there were no footprints and there were hundreds of them -- too many for children to have done it. We realized it must have been the wind."

The formation of the snowrollers is extremely rare in England because they can only form in a precise set of unusual conditions.

"These rolls are unusual here because we don't tend to have major snow events like the one we're experiencing now. They happen with the combination of lying snow and high wind speeds, mostly in North America and Northern Europe, and they can be as small as a tennis ball or they can be as large as two feet across" said Liz Bentley of the Royal Meteorological Society.

The phenomenon was photographed in Idaho last March, in parts of Nebraska and Kansas in 2008, and in Illinois in 2003 .