Forecasting 101: All About Hail

I thought that will severe weather season just around the corner for most of us that I would tell you about hail. Hail is a really neat weather phenomenon. Hail is formed when small water droplets are caught in the updraft of a thunderstorm. Before I go any further, I want to teach you about what an updraft is. Refer to the figure below of a basic thunderstorm anvil. Both the updraft and the downdraft are essential parts of a thunderstorm, without them the thunderstorm would not exist or would be weakening significantly.

Now we have water droplets caught by the warm updraft, these particles are lifted high within the cloud until they are frozen. The now ice particles descends, however, if the melting ice particle descends near the updraft they can be once again lifted high within the cloud and will refreeze. This process will continue to occur until the updraft cannot support the weight of the ice particle, also known as hail, at this time the hail will fall to the ground.

I want you to think about how strong the winds have to be within a cloud to support the growth of some of the hail that has been recorded. For example, the largest hailstone recorded to date is 8 inches in diameter and weighs almost one pound! This means that the updraft speed had to be somewhere around 200 miles per hour. That is one severe storm!!


One side note, if you ever are taken pictures of hail (which I know you all do! ha) make sure you put something in the picture like a quarter. It's actually super hard to tell how large a hail stone is without a visual comparison. 

Sorry this one is late the rain storm this morning made my wifi super slow. 

Photo From:
wximpact40-88.pbworks.com
Meteorologynews.com