HAIL
Hail is a form of precipitation consisting of solid ice that forms inside
thunderstorm updrafts. Hail can damage aircraft, homes and cars, and can
be deadly to livestock and people.
Hailstones are formed when raindrops are carried upward by thunderstorm
updrafts into extremely cold areas of the atmosphere and freeze. Hailstones
then grow by colliding with liquid water drops that freeze onto the
hailstone’s surface. If the water freezes instantaneously when colliding with
the hailstone, cloudy ice will form as air bubbles will be trapped in the newly
formed ice. However, if the water freezes slowly, the air bubbles can escape
and the new ice will be clear. The hail falls when the thunderstorm's updraft
can no longer support the weight of the hailstone, which can occur if the
stone becomes large enough or the updraft weakens.
Hailstones can have layers of clear and cloudy ice if the hailstone encounters
different temperature and liquid water content conditions in the
thunderstorm. The conditions experienced by the hailstone can change as it
passes horizontally across or near an updraft. The layers, however, do not
occur simply due to the hailstone going through up and down cycles inside a
thunderstorm. The winds inside a thunderstorm aren’t simply up and down;
horizontal winds exist from either a rotating updraft, like in supercell
thunderstorms, or from the surrounding environment’s horizontal winds.
Hailstones also do not grow from being lofted to the top of the
thunderstorm. At very high altitudes, the air is cold enough (below -40°F)
that all liquid water will have frozen into ice, and hailstones need liquid water
to grow to an appreciable size.
Hail falls when it becomes heavy enough to overcome the strength of the
thunderstorm updraft and is pulled toward the earth by gravity. Smaller
hailstones can be blown away from the updraft by horizontal winds, so
larger hail typically falls closer to the updraft than smaller hail. If the winds
near the surface are strong enough, hail can fall at an angle or even nearly
sideways! Wind-driven hail can tear up siding on houses, break windows and
blow into houses, break side windows on cars, and cause severe injury
and/or death to people and animals.
The fall speed of hail primarily depends on the size of the hailstone, the
friction between the hailstone and surrounding air, the local wind conditions
(both horizontal and vertical), and the degree of melting of the hailstone.
Early research assumed that hailstones fell like solid ice spheres and showed
very high fall speeds, even for very small hailstones. However, recent
research outside of NSSL using 3-D printed casts of real hailstones
suspended in a vertical wind tunnel has repeatedly shown that natural
hailstones fall more slowly than solid ice spheres. For small hailstones (<1-
inch in diameter), the expected fall speed is between 9 and 25 mph. For
hailstones that one would typically see in a severe thunderstorm (1-inch to
1.75-inch in diameter), the expected fall speed is between 25 and 40 mph. In
the strongest supercells that produce some of the largest hail one might
expect to see (2-inches to 4-inches in diameter), the expected fall speed is
between 44 and 72 mph. However, there is much uncertainty in these
estimates due to variability in the hailstone’s shape, degree of melting, fall
orientation, and the environmental conditions. However, it is possible for
very large hailstones (diameters exceeding 4-inches) to fall at over 100 mph.
Although Florida has the most thunderstorms, Nebraska, Colorado, and
Wyoming usually have the most hailstorms. The area where these three
states meet – “hail alley” – averages seven to nine hail days per year. Other
parts of the world that have damaging hailstorms include China, Russia,
India and northern Italy.
When viewed from the air, it is evident that hail falls in paths known as hail
swaths. These occur as storms move while the hail is falling out They can
range in size from a few acres to an area 10 miles wide and 100 miles long.
Some storms, instead of producing large hail, instead produce copious
amounts of small hail. Storms like these have produced hail drifts that, when
captured in clogged drainage channels, formed piles of hail several feet
deep. Hail that completely covers roadways is especially hazardous because
if deep enough, a vehicle’s tires may not touch the roadway at all, with the
vehicle instead driving on the hail, which acts exactly like an icy roadway in
the winter.
The largest hailstone recovered in the United States fell in Vivian, South
Dakota, on June 23, 2010, with a diameter of 8 inches and a circumference of
18.62 inches. It weighed 1 lb 15 oz.
