Wednesday, February 22, 2012

06/16/11 Hailstone Rings

Large hail fell in many places around the southeast yesterday with some up around tennis ball size. So how can hail get to be so large?
hail-stones
Above is a picture of nickel size hail from Lauderdale county, AL. 
hailring
Above is some more nickel size hail from Franklin, TN
What's important to notice about these pictures are the circles that appear to be inside some of the hailstones.  Just like how tree rings tell you how old a tree is, hail rings tell you something similar. Hail rings show you how many times the hail stone went up and down inside the cloud. Each time it falls to the bottom of the cloud it melts a little, and then the winds inside the storm shoot the hail back to the top of the cloud where the newly melted surface is now refrozen into a different layer. It does this over and over again until the hail becomes too heavy fow the winds in the cloud to support it, then it falls down to the ground.

No comments:

Post a Comment