Chunk of ice, megacryometeor, falls from sky mysteriously crashing through Chicago man's ceiling

John “Sinatra” Connors and his cat Oscar, along with the mysterious ice chunks that crashed through his ceiling sometime Tuesday morning, wrecking his living room.

A Chicago man arrived home from work on Tuesday evening only to discover three bowling ball-size chunks of ice in his living room and a freaked out cat.

John "Sinatra" Connors, an information technology specialist and occasional lounge crooner, said that whatever crashed through the roof of his Ravenswood Manor apartment building landed with such velocity that it shattered the ceiling beams.

"When I walked into my apartment the chair that is normally against the wall was pushed into the middle of the living room," he said. "There was ice everywhere. I could see the sky through the hole in my ceiling."

Connors found one chunk of ice in his bedroom, a good 15 to 20 feet away from the crash's epicenter. He says he was in was in too much shock to notice the frigid, arctic wind whipping through the gaping hole in his ceiling.

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Besides Connors' cat, Oscar, the only other possible witness to the mysterious falling ice chunks was his 81-year-old neighbor, Doris Patiz, who keeps an eye on the building during the day when everyone is at work. Patiz reported hearing a loud boom just before noon on Tuesday.

"I was putting on my clothes to go downstairs when I heard a horrible blast," Patiz said. "I thought a house blew up down the street. I didn't know where the sound was coming from."

Patiz forgot all about the blast until Connors knocked on her door that evening and invited her over to see the opening in his ceiling. His was the only unit in the building that sustained damage.

His friend, Brian McNally, brought over a Shop Vac and helped him clean up the debris. McNally was the first to suggest that perhaps Connors had been the victim of a megacryometeor, a term used to describe a large block of ice that seemingly falls out of the clear blue sky.

The strange phenomenon of ice chunks dropping from the sky for no apparent reason appears to be happening throughout the world. Connors figures that whatever fell from the sky into his living room was huge and that there was at least six hours of melting before he came home and discovered it.

The website WeatherImagery.com says that most megacryometeors weigh between 20 and 25 pounds -- enough to crush a Buick or leave a crater in someone's ceiling. While megacryometeors share similar textural, hydro-chemical and isotopic features of large hailstones, meteorologists don't believe they are weather-related.

It's possible that that the ice chunk could have come from an airplane. Scott Batzel, a local commercial airline pilot, says that Connors' apartment building is in the general vicinity of the extended final approach for planes landing at O'Hare International Airport.

"There's a slight possibility the ice-ball fell from an airplane. It's not a common occurrence but it does happen from time to time," Batzel said. "It's very likely that many arriving airplanes were operating in that vicinity Tuesday."

And just because the stuff that landed in Connors' living room is white and not blue, doesn't mean that it couldn't have come from a leak in an aircraft's commode.

"Some airplanes use potable water to flush the lavatory toilets," Batzel said. "Normally the flushed waste is collected in a storage tank but if the tank was leaking, ice could have built up on the outside of the plane and eventually broke free."

It's also unlikely that the ice came from outer space. Mark Hammergren, an astronomer with the Adler Planetarium, says he's investigated cases of falling ice in the past.

"An extraterrestrial origin has never been proven for any of these cases, ever," Hammergren said via email.

Wherever the hell the ice came from, Connors has 10 pounds of chunks and shards in his freezer next to the frozen chicken.