Extensive footage of giant hail stones and hail storm facts plus the largest hail stone ever officially recorded recreated. Damaging softball sized hail, sideways flying bullet hail and complete summer white outs are a few highlights in this stock hail footage video. For licensing contact hankschyma@yahoo.com HAIL FACTS & Interesting information... 1. Hail injures about 24 people per year in the USA 2. The last hail related death occurred in Texas in 2000 after a man got struck in the head and later died of head trauma. 3. On average, hail causes almost a billion dollars of damage to crops each year in the USA 4. Hail storms killed 246 people in India on April 30, 1888 5. The largest hail stone officially measured landed in Vivian South Dakota, July 23rd, 2010... It was eight inches in diameter and weighed almost two pounds. Hail stones crash through windows, they shred trees and crops, pummel live stock, damage roofs, wreak havoc on cars, and everything underneath its wrath. Hail can turn a scorching Summer ground into a winter wonderland in minutes. Sometimes softballs just fall from the sky. Other times strong winds hurl hail stones sideways like bullets. If you're caught away from shelter during a severe hail storm, you've got a problem. If you're a storm chaser, Hail is your nemesis. FORMATION A Hail stone forms as a tiny super cooled water droplet journeys up above the freezing level in some of the most beautiful and dramatic thunderstorms. In an environment conducive of a severe hail storm, this rising air, or updraft is often exploding into lowered freezing levels.This is the factory where hail is made. When the super cooled droplet freezes, the process releases heat which keeps the stones exterior in a sticky liquid phase. As the little stone journeys up and down and through the cloud it captures more snow and water on the surface... Molecules near the inner layer freezes, and the hail stones grows another layer. Hailstones can also grow by colliding and conglomerating with others... One of the reasons they come in such myriad of odd shapes. Upward winds sustain ice pebbles and the longer they hang around up there, the larger they tend to get. Updraft winds rising at say 40 mph, are easily strong enough to sustain hail the size of dimes or quarters... But some intense updrafts blow up over 100 mph. This is where things really start to get freaky. Eventually, the weight of the hail stone overcomes the updraft winds and it falls to Earth, often appearing as bright white curtains. Isolated thunderstorms with hail downdrafts set the stage for the most vibrant rainbows. If the storm matures into a high precipitation monster, the thick hail core often has a breath-taking turquoise glow. And because these storms often occur in the late afternoon through evening when angled yellow sunlight blasts into the hail core, the yellow and blue make green... And that's why people associate green storm clouds with tornadoes. Strong inflow winds that inhale dust can also add a yellowish filter over the blue core. STORM CHASERS and HAIL: The thought of getting trapped under an intense tornadic hail storm can be frightening, but not nearly as terrifying as the thought of having to sit out a day or two replacing glass while your buddies are out bagging photogenic tornadoes. Often the same powerful updrafts that create giant hail, drop tornadoes. These storms are called supercells. These storms do everything they can to detour storm chasers... They cover the road in ice so you cant drive fast... then they cover the roads in wet slippery leaves so you cant drive fast. If that doesn't work, they drop buckets of hail to reduce the air temperature to the dew point causing hail fog... And of course if that doesn't slow you down, they break your windows. Most chasers just avoid the hail cores often revealed on radar with a pink or purple spot. Other chasers would rather sacrifice portions of their view with metal hail guards and shields to block the icy shrapnel. Others have the luxury of thick super heavy duty glass to shoot through.

• published: 24 Jul 2015
• views: 1949