Although the tornadoes certainly got the headlines, we received tremendous reports of hail across the metro area last weekend. Check out this video that Ed Hubbard in Gwinnett County uploaded to CBS46.com. Notice how quickly the hail begins to accumulate. The other interesting thing was that we had reports of hail as big as baseballs in a few places. That is nearly unheard of here in the southeastern U.S. and much more common in the in the plains states.
Hail is often confused with sleet and vice versa. While rain freezes on the way to the ground and becomes sleet. Hail forms by water being carried way up inside of a thunderstorm where it freezes. It then is unable to melt before it hits the ground. One of the best explainers as to how hail forms is on USAToday.com.
Each time a hail stone us carried up by an updraft inside of a thunderstorm the hailstone collects more water and re-freezes causing it to get bigger. Technically, you can cut open a hail stone and count the number of rings inside which will tell you how many times the hail has gone up and down inside of the thunderstorm.
Lets hope it is a while before we have any weather like last weekend. Right now the forecast looks dry for much of the work week ahead.
--Chris
1 comments:
Love the pics of those hail balls..very interesting blog..As weather enthusiast hope you drop by on my Online Weather Community, there are many weather blogger and promet's that you can chat with online and share thoughts on weather discussion..
Sincerely,
Zack
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