Mysterious Ice Ball Falls Near Riva, Investigation Continues

The weather alert in Riva was triggered yesterday morning at 11 a.m. Marco Zanellato, a Riva driver residing in Rione Due Giugno, was passing through via Pasina when he suddenly saw a ball of ice with a diameter of 4-5 centimeters fall no more than a meter from his windshield and shatter on the asphalt below.

“It almost hit me directly,” he recounted. And right at that moment, a commercial airplane was flying overhead. Zanellato took out his phone and immediately called the Carabinieri. Thus, the Busa area also triggered a “hailstorm alert.”

A joke? Hardly, given that in via Pasina almost all the houses are low-rise, and the Riva driver told the Carabinieri that he clearly saw the ice chunk coming from above. So, what could it have been?

Investigation and explanations about the “mysterious ball”

The authorities promptly began searching for the “mysterious ball,” but in the suspected area they only found broken slabs in dozens of pieces, likely dumped from truck tarpaulins, which unfortunately frequently pass along via Pasina.

The same Zanellato, accompanied by some officers, returned to the scene, examined the ice, and said it had nothing to do with what he saw falling just a hand’s breadth from his nose. And so, the mystery remains unresolved.

Mysterious “hailstorm” in Linfano

Less mysterious, instead, was the supposed “hailstorm” that alarmed some people in the Linfano area, right at the intersection with the Gardesana. Everyone wondered where the hail had fallen from, but a witness — a man from Torbole who was nearby walking — saw everything happen.

The blocks of ice had fallen from the roof of a truck coming from Arco and heading toward Rovereto. They looked like blocks fallen from the sky, but they had nothing to do with the sky itself.