Falling ice at Moxee home: 'It could have killed somebody' (photos, video)

June 24--MOXEE -- Dwaine Morrison almost did not believe his daughter, Alexandra, when she called Tuesday night to tell him a cantaloupe-sized ball of ice had just crashed through the roof of their house.

"It's unbelievable," said the 45-year-old East Valley High School math teacher. "I mean, you're doubting your kid's word."

But Alexandra, 16, texted him photos of blue sky showing through the ceiling of a walk-in closet and a partially broken chunk of ice resting on the floor, stuck with pink insulation and sheet rock.

Nobody was hurt, but the incident has left Morrison's family of five dealing with insurance agents, a blue tarp over their accidental new vent and a ball of ice stored in a salad bowl inside their garage freezer.

"Not forever, but temporarily until we find out what caused it possibly," he said.

The ice is not likely from hail, said Mike Vescio, meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Pendleton, Ore. "I just don't see any meteorological reason why that would occur," he said.

Megacryometeors, largely unexplained chunks of ice falling from seemingly clear blue skies, are not unheard of.

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating to if see a plane somehow dropped the chunk. Ice occasionally falls from planes, according to news reports, when pipes sometimes leak and water freezes in the air, only to melt and detach when the aircraft descends.

"Temperatures at cruising altitude are well below zero, even this time of year," said Allen Kenitzer, a spokesman with the FAA's flight standards district office in Renton, in an email.

Investigators will visit Yakima soon, he said, and are trying to determine which planes may have been flying about 7 p.m. over Moxee, a city of 3,700 east of Yakima.

Kenitzer didn't know how often U.S. planes send ice hurling toward earth. "We do not keep statistics on white ice," he said.

That would be white ice as opposed to "blue ice," the blue color of disinfectant in plane lavatories.

That kind of ice also has been known to fall due to leaks, but not in Morrison's case. His ice is, if not clear, white.

He was coaching a softball game of his daughter Madison, Tuesday night. His daughter was on the mound while wife Kristin, also an East Valley teacher, was watching.

Alexandra and her 13-year-old brother Javin were home making dinner and watching TV when they heard the commotion upstairs.

Brian Locke, a neighbor, helped the kids store the ice and cover the hole in the roof with a tarp. Police arrived and asked for help from the Yakima Air Terminal, which steered them toward the FAA, said Rob Peterson, airport manager.

He's scratching his head as much as anybody.

"This is a big mystery to me as far as where the big chunk of ice came from," Peterson said. "I'm not sure I could point directly to an aircraft."

Sgt. Mark Lewis of the Moxee Police Department does not suspect vandalism.

"For it to go through two layers of roof like it did, it would probably have to go from several thousand feet," he said.

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