NewMadrid fault line: 2011 military plans and Haarp

devakas wrote:
dutchsinse recorded baseball size hail, not seen before

Hail

How does hail form? It starts out as falling rain, several miles up in the clouds. But an updraft(an upward blowing wind) holds it aloft, moving it upward instead of allowing it to fall. As it goes up, it freezes because of the colder temperatures aloft. Drops of supercooled water(agitated liquid water colder than 32 degrees) hit these pellets of ice and freeze on. The mass of ice may fall and then be lifted again several times, each time getting larger and larger as more water freezes onto it. When the hail is so big that the updraft can't hold it aloft any more, it falls to the ground. Other times, the updraft may weaken, or shift its position and the hail falls because of that. The stronger the updraft is, the larger the hail can be. It takes an updraft of 55+ mph to create hail the size of a golf ball, and an updraft of 90+ or more mph to create hail the size of a baseball.

It usually takes hail the size of a hen's egg to dent a car, but hail the size of baseballs can kill animals who can't find a sheltering tree that breaks the fall of the fall.

When cut in half, hail may display layers of clear ice separated by layers of cloudy ice, similar to tree rings seen on cut trees. It may be round, but can also be flattened, with knobs and bumps.

How big does it get? THIS is how big! Here are some hail reports, straight from National Weather Service offices: