Giant snowballs appear on Russian beach in Siberia

A strange and beautiful sight greeted locals in the Gulf of Ob, in northwest Siberia, after thousands of natural snowballs formed on the beach. An 11-mile (18km) stretch of coast was covered in the icy spheres. The sculptural shapes range from the size of a tennis ball to almost 1m (3ft) across. They result from a rare environmental process where small pieces of ice

form, are rolled by wind and water, and end up as giant snowballs. Locals in the village of Nyda, which lies on the Yamal Peninsula just above the Arctic Circle, say they have never seen anything to compare to them. Russian TV quoted an explanation from Sergei Lisenkov, press secretary of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute: FULL REPORT