Grotesque oval ice formations created by a rare coincidence of factors on Hailuoto island in northern Finland have wowed netizens. Going to the beach you'd always expect clear sands to walk through, but a couple hiking around Finland were surprised to see some egg-like formations on the beach. Over thousands of egg-shaped balls of ice have formed a cover on the Hailuoto Island in the Gulf of Bothnia between Finland and Sweden.

Amateur photographer Risto Mattila and his wife were at the Marjaniemi beach when they observed this amazing sight of "ice eggs". He shared a picture of the same online and its making news everywhere. Few more of his pictures of the rice eggs formed to due to a rare weather phenomenon were shared online and are going viral. Unique Beaches Around the World: Fish Poop or Recycled Coloured Glasses, These Formations are Strange Yet Beautiful.

The picture looks like a blanket cover of snow balls, but more like ice and tiny ones. Mattila has been staying in the vicinity but had never seen something like this in the last 25 years. He told BBC News, "I was with my wife at Marjaniemi beach. The weather was sunny, about -1C (32F) and it was quite a windy day. There we found this amazing phenomenon. There was snow and ice eggs along the beach near the water line." He mentioned that an area of over 30m was covered with these snow balls, and not all of them were as tiny. Some of the ice balls were the size of footballs. Know About India's Mysterious Hide and Seek Beach in Odisha.

According to weather experts, this is a result of the extreme winds. The large ice sheets are jostled around by the sea waves and get round. As the water freezes on the surface due to the cold, it turns into these ice balls. When the tide goes out, these ice balls in the egg-shaped remain on the beach. The combination of cold and wind forms this rare condition.

But isn't it pretty? Walking on these would be like walking through sheets of ice. Similar such ice eggs were observed back in the year 2016 in Russia's Siberia and also at Lake Michigan near Chicago.