A week ago in Naples, halestones as large as baseballs fell at speeds of 75mph, injuring animals, several people, and countless windshields.
What caused this, you may ask? A severe thunderstorm brought on by the southward plunge of the jet stream. The storm started over the Mediterranean, forming into the severe thunderstorm that caused halestones larger then the one shown above the fall as it raked across the Italian peninsula.
The cost of damages caused by this storm is yet unknown, but it seems unlikely to break the record of Europe's most destructive hailstorm.It seems a fairly safe bet that that title will stay with the hailstorm that struck Munich, Germany back in 1984.
Though it hopefully won't reach the price-tag of $2 billion that Germany's storm of 1984 did, it will definitely take some change to fix the property damage caused this past Saturday.
http://www.weather.com/storms/severe/news/baseball-hail-italy-pozzuoli-naples-sep2015
This post caused me to look up what causes hail. I'm curious because hail is made of ice and these storms don't always happen in the coldest weather. So I researched it. Hail forms in an unstable air mass, in which the temperature falloff with height is much greater. This causes tilted updrafts at high speeds. Between the updrafts and the downdrafts, the hail stones become larger from being tossed about.
ReplyDeleteIn 1888, hail stones killed 250 people in India. This stuff can be deadly!
This is pretty scary. The largest I have seen were about the size of golf balls and did a lot of damage I can just imagine what these would do.
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