A wall of ice that was pushed out of a lake and across snow-covered ground by strong winds has destroyed 12 homes and damaged 15.
The 9m (30ft) high slab took about ten minutes to rise up out of the water and slide across the beach before crashing into properties near the shoreline of Dauphin Lake in Canada.
Resident Doug David described how it pushed furniture around and threw his bath into the hallway when it ploughed through his two-storey home, propelled by 55mph gusts in Ochre Beach, Manitoba.
Official Clayton Watts told the Winnipeg Free Press: ‘We had people barbecuing on their decks. They turned around to go inside to get something, they came back out and their decks were ripping apart.
‘It was like a freight train coming through, they say.’
Winds of up to 40mph led to a similar but less powerful ice wall rising out of Mille Lacs Lake, about 960km (600 miles) to the south in Minnesota, US.
Resident Darla Johnson captured footage of it piled up in heaps after slamming into homes at Izaty’s Resort.
She told CBS: ‘You could hear it right through the doors, that’s what alerted us to all of it.
‘And we turned around and you could just see it. It’s creepy because it starts coming towards you and you’re like: “What is that!”‘
Emergency teams have been shifting the ice with heavy machinery.