Tuesday, 21 May, 2013

Typically, the swirl of stormy weather obscures the cells at the heart of severe thunderstorms. This uncommonly clear view of an entire thunderstorm cell, with the top of the growing cumulonimbus tower topping out at 40,000 feet, reveals many interesting features, including “fall streaks” of what may be hail from the underside of the overhanging anvil portion of the cloud. Shortly after this photo was taken on May 22, 2011, near Madison, the storm pelted the Sun Prairie area with large, damaging hail.

How does hail form? A large hailstone that fell in Harper, Kansas on May 14, 2004, from the National Weather Service – Wichita, Kansas Hail is precipitation in the form of large balls or lumps of ice that grow in thunderstorms and other severe convective storms. Hailstones begin as small ice particles that grow primarily [...]