(Original headline: Ice chunk from sky sets village aflutter )
KOLKATA: A huge chunk of ice that apparently fell from the sky in a West Bengal village caused a flutter in the area even as weather experts dismissed such phenomenon as absurd.
Local reports here said the incident occurred Friday evening in Katnabil village of Burdwan district, about 100 km from here.
Within minutes, hundreds of villagers flocked to the playground where the chunk was lying. A local photographer who reached the spot at night said the ice had melted to a chunk of about five kilograms within hours.
"The jagged and melting piece is lying in a crater about a foot deep," photographer Rana Ghosh said.
Police station in-charge Sudipta Banerjee said he had sent a probe team.
Burdwan district council leader Uday Sarkar said he has asked people "to try and preserve some of the ice so it could be tested".
The weather section director at the Alipore Met office, G.C. Debnath, said: "It sounds absurd. The atmospheric condition is not favourable even for hail. This can't be a meteorological phenomenon."
