GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — 2017 was packed with mesmerizing meteorological phenomena in West Michigan, along with a notable heat wave and a big wind storm.
Here are the most popular meteorological and astronomical events to occur in West Michigan this year, based on web traffic.
The ice disc is also known as an “ice pan” or “ice circle,” and exactly it how it forms has been mystifying scientists for decades. Discs can range in size from 3 feet to almost 700 feet and have been spotted across countless cold climates. Several states in the U.S. have reported natural ice discs, as have Scandinavian countries.
For years, the water current was believed to have caused the discs to spin — they were thought to have been caught in a swirl of water called an eddy. Recently, that idea was found to be incorrect. If the water was spinning the solid rings of ice, then smaller discs would spin faster than larger discs, but research proved that all the discs spin at the same rate.
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