A HUGE collection of naturally created giant snowballs have suddenly appeared on the Arctic coast of Siberia.

    The balls, described as “white cannonballs” by one local newspaper, were discovered on a beach around the remote village of Nyda in the Gulf of Ob, at the mouth of the world’s seventh-longest river.

    They range in different sizes from the size of tennis balls to basketballs and the perfect snowman’s head.

    Resident Ekaterina Chernyk said, “We have them all in one place. It’s as if someone spilled them.”

    “We were all very surprised. Many people believed it only when they saw it with their own eyes.”

    Village official Valery Akulov said, “Even old-timers say they are seeing this phenomenon for the first time.”

    They may look man-made but the snowballs have been formed by an entirely natural and extremely rare natural phenomenon.

    Some locals have even posed for photos sitting on the sea of snowballs which stretch along the beach.

    A village administrator told The Siberian Times that the snowballs formed in late October when the Gulf of Ob rose up onto land and covered the beach in ice.

    As the water retreated, the remaining ice chunks rolled over creating snowballs which grew and grew in size until they hit gigantic proportions.

    Many of the balls are bigger than a human head.

    The Russian Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) spokesman Sergey Lisenkov said the snowballs form in the waves under certain climatic conditions.

    “A combination of the action of the wind, the outlines of coastline, and the temperature, may lead to the formation of such balls,” he said.

    Siberia is near record cold for this time of year, and snow cover is at around the highest level for this time of year since at least 1998.

    And the bizarre weather in the freezing Russian region could have consequences for the U.S., Mashable reports.

    Some meteorologists use Siberian snow cover levels in October to forecast how weather patterns will form across the United States.

    They believe the heavy early snow, could indicate heavier snowfall in parts of North America and Western Europe this winter.

    Judah Cohen of Atmospheric and Environmental Research in Lexington, Massachusetts, the U.S., forecasts an unusually cold winter for the eastern and middle two-thirds of the nation, especially raw east of the Mississippi River.

    (SD-Agencies)