Cat unhurt as 15-pound ice chunk smashes through roof of Ravenswood Manor home

It sounded an explosion, neighbors say.

But the loud crash was caused by a 15-pound chuck of ice that crashed through the roof of a Ravenswood Manor home Tuesday morning.

The heavy block of ice — which may have fallen from an airplane — did serious damage to 51-year-old John Connors’ home.

But Connors was out when the ice ball hit, and luckily his cat, Oscar, wasn’t hurt.

Neighbor Doris Patitz said she was putting her shoes and coat on about 11:30 a.m. when she heard a “humongous blast.”

“I mean, it was really, really loud,” Patitz told the Sun-Times. “I thought one of the homes had, you know, blown up. It was really that loud.”

Patitz started looking around. She checked the basement of the building in the 4600 block of North Francisco, the rest of the neighborhood and even asked a mailman if he heard it. Nothing.

The mystery was only solved seven hours later when Connors came home. Connors walked in at 6:30 p.m. to a hole in his ceiling and ice and debris all over this apartment.

“I thought this could be water damage but then I looked,” Connors said. “I went to the hole, and I could see the sky.

Connors called a neighbor and a friend to help him clean the place up. A construction worker who eventually came to assess the damage—who said he’d been in the business for 18 years—told the men he’d never seen anything like this.

Connors said his cat was still “pretty freaked out” Thursday night.

It’s not clear where the ice block came from, But Connors said the house is in a flight path, so he has been toying with two possibilities—debris from a passing plane or a freak ice-meteor landing.