'Yellow Ice' Falls On Elk Grove Roof, But Its Origin Is Unknown

ELK GROVE VILLAGE, IL — A mysteroious chunk of "yellow ice" that landed on the roof of an Elk Grove Village home Monday has a resident and officials baffled when it comes to its origins. Was it dropped from an lavatory of an airplane flying overhead? Did it come from a flock of birds? Or was it the result of mischievous pranksters?

Dawn Scarpulla heard the yellow chunk of ice hit the roof of her Nebraska Drive home at around 10:30 a.m. Monday, Jan. 8, and her first thought was that the jaundiced UFO — unidentified falling object — was dropped from an airplane, according to the Daily Herald. Scaruplla told the Herald that her house is in the flight path for O'Hare International Airport, and it's common for planes to be flying low in the area.

The Federal Aviation Administration, however, thinks it's unlikely that the yellow snow came from an overhead plane, the report stated. If it had come from an airplane, the ice would most likely have been blue in color, and even Scarpulla's son said that a chunk as big as what hit his mom's house would have crashed directly through the roof if it had fallen from the height of an aircraft in flight, the report added.

The ice object's size also probably rules out the possibility that birds caused the falling debris, the report stated. Even the idea that it was the result of a prank seems unlikely, given that the chunk would be too heavy for a person to throw it onto Scarpulla's roof from the ground, and the house isn't near any tall trees or structures, the report added.

Fortunately, no one was injured by the chunk of yellow ice, and the damage appears to be minimal, the report stated. Scarpulla's roof survived the encounter intact, but she told the Herald that she did discover a 40-inch ceiling crack near her stairs.

One of the only ways this mystery might be solved is for a scientific analysis to be done on the object to determine what substance created its yellow coloring, the report stated. Scarpulla says she has kept a piece of the ice frozen with plans to pursue that avenue, the report added.

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Photo by Rick Bowmer | Associated Press