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How
big can a hailstone get?
Scientist holds
record-setting hailstone
that fell in Coffeyville, Kansas, in 1970.
Disturbingly,
outlandishly big. Hailstones are born deep inside the
gusty green turbulence of cumulonimbus thunderclouds. In such
storms, powerful updrafts of more than one hundred miles per hour
can suck raindrops as high as eleven miles into the sky, quickly
turning them into ice crystals. These crystals collide into one
another to form tiny pebbles of hail that can make numerous trips
down and back up again to the upper reaches of the storm cloud.
As it accrues one onion-like layer of ice after another, the stone
will eventually become so immense that the updrafts can
no longer support it, and it plummets to the ground.
The
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says the
largest hailstone in the United States fell near the home of Dan
White in
Coffeyville, Kansas on September 3, 1970. It measured 17.5 inches
in
circumference and weighed 1.67 pounds. "I hope I never see
anything like
that again," says White, noting that NOAA meteorologists made
a plaster
cast of the spiky orb—now displayed at the Dalton Defenders
Museum
in downtown Coffeyville. "I saw this green wall cloud coming,
and I
said, 'We're going to get some hail out of that!' The boys went
out with
buckets to hunt for hailstones. It's a good thing they were wearing
their
football helmets— they would have been knocked lulu!"
From ... "Why Moths Hate Thomas Edison" by Hampton
Sides
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