MODESTO, Calif. -- It wasn't a bird, and it wasn't a plane. It was a chunk of ice -- and a big one -- that fell through the roof of a Modesto home Wednesday morning.
It would almost be something to laugh at -- like the story of "Chicken Little" -- except Lisa Lawrence can hold a piece of what actually was falling from the sky -- something big enough to leave a hole in her neighbor's house on Ackerman Way.
"I looked up at it. It was a big ol' ball of ice, bigger than a basketball ... watched it go down. And it went off like a bomb," Lawrence told KTXL.
The destruction and debris left behind at the Savath home started with something strange Lawrence heard about 11:15 in the morning.
"I was sitting in my front yard, just playing on my phone, and I heard what sounded like a jet going by, and I thought 'Wow that's pretty low,'" she said.
With no jet in sight, what turned out to be low and speeding to earth was a huge chunk of ice.
"Sounded so loud, so it must have been traveling pretty fast," recounted Lawrence.
A few members of the Savath family were in their living room at the time, and several kids were playing outside -- even closer to the projectile's path.
"It was scary. Good thing it didn't land in the house," Lawrence said.
Something like this happened to another Modesto family on the southside of town back in August 2007.
That chunk of ice fell through the roof of their living room and was blue, leading to speculation -- just like in this case -- it was discharge from an airplane toilet that froze as it fell.
In this incident, Lawrence could see no color clues.
"I even smelled it ... just regular ice," she said.
Representatives with the Federal Aviation Administration wouldn't speculate on what happened because the incident has not been officially reported to them.
The National Weather Service reports there is no meteorological reason for falling ice in that area, so the true nature of what was really seen may remain a mystery.
