Freaky, huge ice disk discovered spinning in North Dakota river

There it was, just sitting in the Sheyenne River — a perfect circle of ice, about 50 feet in diameter, gently rotating in the water.

George Loegering’s discovery of the huge ice disk last Saturday has been a big hit over the Web after his video of the phenomenon went viral.

“It’s an amazing wonder,� Loegering, 73, of Casselton, N.D., said in the video, which was reproduced by the Associated Press. “I don’t have a clue how it did it, but that thing is rotating, as you can see.�

A National Weather Service hydrologist and a weather service meteorologist told the Associated Press that the ice circle could be attributed to the cold, dense air that collected over North Dakota last week — nothing nefarious.

The river began to freeze from the cold, they said, but slowly enough that tiny chunks of ice probably got caught together in an eddy and formed a tidy little galaxy spinning out on the water.

“It’s not a continuous sheet of ice,� Allen Schlag, a National Weather Service hydrologist, told the AP. “If you were to throw a grapefruit-size rock on it, it would go through. It’s not a solid piece of ice — it’s a collection of ice cubes.�

In other words, don’t try to walk on it.

Similar phenomena have been documented in colder states and countries. You can see videos of somewhat similar disks here, here and here.

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