Giant snowballs (Photo Credit: Sergei Bychenkov)

Imagine going to the beach and finding thousands of perfectly shaped snowballs scattered around. That is exactly what the lucky residents of Nyda in Siberiaā€™s Yamal Peninsula have encountered since late October.

The snowballs that cover an 11-mile stretch of the beach range from the size of a tennis ball to almost 3ft across, or about as big as a basketball. According to the village administrator, the balls were created after water from the Gulf of Orb rose up onto the land and covered the sandy beach. The areaā€™s freezing temperatures caused it to partially turn to ice.

Melting spheres form a ā€˜snowball wallā€™ (Photo Credit: Alexei Primak)

As the rest of the water retreated, the ice chunks rolled over in the moist sand and with a little help from the wind and temperature, created a beautiful winter wonderland of snowballs. The residents of Glen Harbor in Michigan experienced a similar phenomenon in 2014, except in their case, the snowballs were as big as boulders!

Resources: bbc.co.uk, dailymail.co.uk