February 15, 2014
Ummmmm - about that little snowball
From the magazine of Reed College (Portland, Oregon):Giant snowball batters Reed dorm
A giant runaway snowball crashed into a Reed dorm on Saturday evening, ripping a wall off its studs and narrowly missing a window. No one was injured in the collision.
College officials say the ball was some 40 inches in diameter and weighed from 800 to 900 pounds. �It was a big snowball,� says maintenance manager Steve Yeadon.
The episode started Saturday during a storm that dumped as much as 12 inches of snow on Portland. A couple of students decided to make a large snowball in the quadrangle formed by the Grove dorms, according to an incident report from the Community Safety Office. They rolled it back and forth across the Grove Quad in what must have at first seemed a Sisyphean undertaking. But as time went on, the frozen sphere picked up more and more snow, gained mass, and grew increasingly ponderous. Soon a rumor sprang up that the Doyle Owl was entombed in its icy heart. By 8 p.m., a crowd had gathered in the Quad and was chanting �Roll it! Roll it!�
Two students�both math majors�then rolled the gargantuan blob down the path that leads from the Quad to SE 28th Street. Unfortunately, they miscalculated its trajectory. The snowball picked up momentum, veered off course, and smacked into Unit #7 of the Reed College Apartments.
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