A dose of common sense from Marshall Shepherd
As I browsed the social media, I saw claims of climate change, “end of times” language, and sheer awe that hail fell in Mexico during the Summer. I thought that it would be instructive to provide context and perspective on this event before things get too carried away.
Hail is not uncommon during the summer. In fact, it is quite likely. For many people, it is counterintuitive that large chunks of ice can fall from the sky during the hottest season of the year. Hail forms in cumulonimbus clouds, which are quite common during the warm season.
Later in the article he drills down into regional points.
It is not surprising that higher elevations would experience a greater number of hail days. Florida receives more thunderstorms than most states in the U.S., but “hail alley” Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming. These states receive 7 to 9 hail days per year according to NOAA because the freezing levels (32 degrees F or less) in those regions are closer to the ground. Guadalajara, Mexico sits at an elevation above 5,000 feet. Hail is not necessarily abnormal at this geographic location. What about the vigorous amount of hail seen in photographs all over social media?
And the real sanity check.
It was clearly a dramatic and extremely impressive event with major local impacts–but I think the physical characteristics have been fundamentally mischaracterized. I have no doubt there were 1-2 meter hail drifts in some spots (photos attest to that)–but those drifts were clearly created by flash flooding down streets and culverts in a highly urbanized area. (A strong clue are the cars stacked on top of each other–water did that, not hail!). Come to think of it, the physical constraints of a single storm dropping 6+ feet of actual solid ice would probably be prohibitive anywhere on Earth, I would think. I don’t know the exact numbers, but even just considering the amount of column water or the vertical forces required to loft that much solid water…well, suffice it to say it would stretch credulity.
Shepherd is a mainstream scientist, so the rest of the article puts the episode in consensus perspective, but without the hysteria, hyperbole that is so common these days.
I want to close by dealing with the climate change question. Even officials in Mexico were so stunned by the hail drifts that they mentioned climate change. It is quite common after extreme weather events for some people to say “see climate change caused this.” The other partner in this very familiar social media “waltz” is the”things happen naturally or are not unprecedented” narrative. Climate change is very real, and humans are a significant cause of our crisis. Virtually every credible scientific organization and peer-reviewed report affirms this point. A 2016 National Academy of Science report even explored the emerging science of attributing current extreme events to climate change. Concerning severe convective storms that produce hail or tornadoes (SCS on the graphic below), linkages are not nearly as compelling (right now) as they are for heatwaves, drought, extreme rainfall, and lack of extreme cold events
The crisis consensus tacked on the end. Why? Afraid of losing funding?
Declaration of orthodoxy.
In modern parlance: “Virtue signalling”.
Gotta add some wording to get the story published
I wager the editor was thinking “we can’t publish this” until reading the last paragraph.
Copernicus “CYA” moment 🙂
“Climate change is very real”
You can always tell that you are dealing with religion when the true conscripts must continually reinforce their superstitious beliefs.
They are climate change deniers. When they say ‘climate change’, they are talking about only climate change due to increased atmospheric CO2. In other words, they deny natural climate change.
Climate change is real. That’s what the climate does and has always done.
commieBob, this image gets at your point:
commieBob, this image gets at your point:
He left out some words that a unbiased, impartial scientist would have included:
“Climate change is very real and normal. Always has, always will“
I saw the same thing of reinforcing during the early days of AIDS. HIV was always followed with “the virus that causes AIDS” (not interested in a discussion, so if curious search Peter Duesberg).
Hail is not uncommon during the summer.
We used to get stupendous hailstorms in our Kansas summers. 4″ hailstones, good for the local body and fender shops.
I recall a visit to France in August 195? when the locals delighted on pointing out the photographs — probably in Le Figaro — of hailstones the size of golf balls in Tunbridge Wells!
I’ve always associated hail with summer or autumn. Winter and spring bring sleet.
D@mn! How old are you? 🙂
LOL @ Phil R!
Good one! :oD
No, no- the question is supposed to read “How new are you, minster?”
Newminster
With some trepidation…
I attended the 1961 French Grand Prix in Rheims on a day that was incredibly hot. Just unbelievable and humid, of course. People were fainting left and right.
It was a hot week from what I read, on a par with the current heat wave.
re: “good for the local body and fender shops.”
I have seen (Texas) roofs and skylights suffer too, as well as mailboxes even, so those associated shops see an uptick in business too.
While rare, hail does occur in Florida. In Florida, a lot of pools are covered with screens to keep out the mosquitoes. One hail storm that I remember shredded everyone of these screens in a several mile wide area.
Hailed and lightninged about an hour ago during a parade in Livingston, MT. No one died so the parade went on.
If you rely on solar photovoltaic for your “sustainable” energy, check this: http://joannenova.com.au/2018/12/sydney-hail-storm-just-how-hailproof-are-those-solar-panels/
Weather related question.
Does hail usually fall straight down so that the side windows on a car or truck wouldn’t need protection? Refer to the picture of pool noodles strung together as a mat to prevent hail damage to your vehicle. See where I’m going with this?
In about 2006, my car side view mirror, parallel to the ground and protected by a slight overhang, was cracked by hail caught up in strong horizontal winds.
In spring 1968 or ’69, in Iowa City, I had an old Ford convertible. Big hail ripped the cloth top, but being the color of Duct Tape, it was easily and cheaply repaired.
Insofar as these big-hail episodes are rare, one needs to be a confirmed pessimist to keep a car covered with “pool noodles.”
Cute, though.
In the 1960s in northern Nigeria (I was with the geological survey there) I saw quite a number of hailstorms. One was a lot like the one described in Guadaljara. In Hausa it is called ‘kungkali’. Right after a storm, villagers gather the hail and bury a ton or two in a pit, covering it with vegetation. They use it for scorpion stings,bruises etc. while it lasts. With a good storm of coarse hail, they could a keep thick cache of it for a number of days.
Re ‘Global warming’, it was a cooled to low 30sC but the day after was often back up into the 40sC!
It’s not a crisis.
On the other hand, human activity does cause local climate change because of land use changes. link If you previously had thousands of square miles of forest and now you’ve got thousands of square miles of crop land, the local climate will be different.
Local climate change due to land use is easy to demonstrate. Climate change due to increased atmospheric CO2 can’t be distinguished from natural climate change.
“linkages are not nearly as compelling (right now) as they are for heatwaves, drought, extreme rainfall, and lack of extreme cold events”
Except the IPCC disagrees. He must be a denier.
Read that again carefully. He is actually saying that there is no linkage. He just does it in a way that does not endanger his concensus credentials.
“linkages are even less compelling (right now) than they are for heatwaves, drought, extreme rainfall, and lack of extreme cold events” Source: IPCC (Fixed it for you)
Climate change has always been real. It is not new. For the first 1/4 or more of this planet’s life, it was too hot for life to exist on it. There has been a lot of change. And more coming.
“There has been a lot of change. And more coming.”
I’m assuming your point is climate always changes so nothing to worry about now. It’s like saying people die all the time, so don’t worry about that pain in your chest.
It’s nothing like that. The planet does not have anything vaguely resembling a pain in its chest. Every weather phenomenon or series of phenomena that we are being asked to view as a crisis has happened previously in the earth’s history.
Sea levels have been higher; and lower. CO2 levels have been higher (much); and lower (not much or we wouldn’t be here). Temperatures have been higher; and lower. In reality we are living in benign age where extreme weather is less common than in many times in the past. And we are better able to cope with extremes than we have ever been. And provided we aren’t stupid enough to spend £1 trillion pounds (and that’s just the UK!) trying to reduce CO2 emissions to net zero and thereby, maybe, reduce the earth’s temperature by 0.01° even though the Blessed Hansen admits that “global average temperature is not a useful metric” then there is every chance that our grandchildren will be even better placed than we are to handle any extreme events that might crop up.
“The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.” The IPCC said so. Just cling to that thought and you’ll be OK!
(Incidentally, who gets this £trillion that it is going to cost “us” not to have an effect on global temperatures? I mean … if it’s coming out of “our” pockets, whose pockets is it going into?)
“It’s like saying people die all the time, so don’t worry about that pain in your chest.”
And THAT is like saying, “The earth has a fever.”
The earth is not a human body. The earth is a very old planet that has experienced many changes in climate. We did not cause those changes.
IF the earth really did have a fever or a pain in its chest, there is NO doctor that can put it right.
We are a tiny tribe living on this planet. We could all fit comfortably at the bottom of the Mariana Trench,
We could all be easily wiped out by a meteor strike, or by worldwide eruptions of volcanoes or even by events that have never entered into our feeble, mortal imaginations.
Why are so many locked into the ridiculous idea that a slight warming is cataclysmic?
Why are so many locked into the ridiculous idea that a slight warming is cataclysmic?
Self-hatred that is also projected onto everyone else.
Except that the doctors have already told you that the pain in your chest is just heart burn.
Depends which doctors you listen to. Clearly you favour the witch doctors.
Simon, are you feeling all right? Your come backs lately have been even more pathetic than usual.
Right, listen to the doctor that wants you to undergo very expensive procedures for what might be heartburn.
Oceans formed early in Earth’s history, ie by some 4.41 Ga.
When life appeared here is more controversial, with molecular clocks and other evidence predating the oldest microbial fossil-bearing rocks. It’s possible, indeed probable, that organisms arose or arrived here before four billion years ago:
Integrated genomic and fossil evidence illuminates life’s early evolution and eukaryote origins
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6152910/
One possible explanation for the emergence of life so early in Earth’s history:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/01/how-ancient-cataclysm-may-have-jump-started-life-earth
I remember as a boy sitting next to Lily Langtry’s lawyer outside the General Abercrombie during the Arundel summer flower show – closed our eyes and took a deep breath – golly, we are on the Obertheogul glacier!
Typical of storms during the Little Ice Age.
Reference? Most of what I recall from Brian Fagan’s The Little Ice Age in Europe was a sudden onset of chilly damp weather, hardly conducive to thunderstorm development. https://www.amazon.com/Little-Ice-Age-Climate-1300-1850/dp/0465022723/ref=sr_1_1
OTOH, during the Year Without a Summer (1816), the storm track was depressed south and had a meridional flow. That brought a number of strong thunderstorms to New England, and also temperatures up to 100F in New Hampshire. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/06/05/summer-of-1816-in-new-hampshire-a-tale-of-two-freezes/
However, that was a very different weather patten than the LIA.
Ric,
The year 1816 was right in the middle of the Dalton Minimum, the last episode of the LIA.
I recall some years ago, maybe 15, maybe 18 years ago (maybe longer), a popup thunderstorm dropped something like 1 to 2 feet of hail over a small town called Apopka in Florida.
This is one of the centers of the tropical plant industry in the US, and there are a large number of greenhouse growers in that area.
This is an unusual event but not outrageous, and certainly not unheard of.
The most unusual part of it is probably that such random events will most likely occur over an uninhabited or sparsely inhabited spot.
All that is required is for a very vigorous and very tall thunderstorm to stay over one spot.
This is not at all unusual for central Florida in Summer…winds are often very light, and on many days sea breezes from both coasts collide in the center of the state and explode upwards.
But what really stood out was that the very next day, the exact same area had the same thing happen!
One to two feet of hail, again, back to back days.
Both were highly localized…a few miles away and just rain or even nothing.
Since these are random pop up storms, the odds of two freakishly rare events occurring on consecutive days is incredibly low.
For them both to be in the same place…incalculably low odds of that happening.
I do not recall any such large amounts of hail ever falling anywhere in the state before or since.
Large amounts, yes.
But by the foot is very rare for anyplace.
The lesson for me was that very unlikely events do happen occasionally.
It was not a trend, or a portent.
It was just mighty slim odds and it happened to occur in a place I was very familiar with having been in that biz for many years.
I personally have only seen hail fall a few times in my life, and I always pay attention in strong storms.
One other very unusual series of events I can recall here in Florida, was one Summer about 7 years ago, which was the Summer of rainbows.
I saw more rainbows in a month in the same small area of SW Florida than in the whole rest of my life combined, by a factor of ten I think.
For comparison, whole years have gone by w/ not one sighting of a rainbow.
Weather is sometimes inexplicable.
In the mid 60’s I worked as a Ranger at the Philmont Scout Ranch near Cimarron, New Mexico. We would get up in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and experience some severe thunderstorms and baseball sized hail. The dry wash creeks would suddenly become a tsunami of debris, ice and foaming water, extremely dangerous to even be near during a storm. If outside travel was necessary, then we put cooking pots on our heads. A few of the smaller guys were occasionally knocked over by the hailstones. We sheltered the horses and pack mules under the trees. There was a thunderstorm every day at 10AM and another at 3:30PM…
That the “1.5m” was from drift occurred to me too. It looked like that in the photos. The biggest hail accumulation on the ground ever recorded was 45cm in Kansas, 1959.
http://www.severe-weather.eu/theory/hail-world-records-the-biggest-heaviest-and-deadliest-hail/
I read a report in the BBC (British Biased-Broadcasting Corporation), and regrettably didn’t preserve it, because when I saw the same report later on I’m pretty sure that they had added a bit that said the hail was caused by warming (I think they left out the word “global”, but that’s academic because the inference would have been clear).
Every town I’ve been to in Mexico uses the streets as storm sewers. Since Hail floats, it looks to me like the hail was washed in from other places up hill, and the carrying water went down a drain and the hail stayed on the street… but I’m not in the dishonest media.
For the press, I was wondering if the hap-hazard placement of the cars and minivans on the street (at the bottom of that hill) would serve as a clue that wondrous amounts of water (with hail present, washed by the water) were involved, but, it takes more than than a subtle ‘clue’ today for the media to ‘catch on’ …
Their lack of curiosity and inquisitiveness is highly lacking. I reckon those types do not seek out J-school?
If the drifts weren’t caused by water then that leaves wind.
How strong would the winds have needed to be to make drifts of little balls of ice?
Certainly strong enough to have caused lots of wind damage. Any reports of wind damage?
In Germany, across the “pond”, heil cannons were part of our kid’s amusement’s. Summer times, we would bet on how many shots will be heard. Our grand-fathers were however amazed by the ever increasing hail damages
Today no shot was heard since decades, farmers have lost the fear from heil as it almost never happens.
However we still dodge nasty cumulonimbus as our instructors taught us following the advice of the ones who trained them far back in time.
Yes, cumulonimbus are the same unpredictable pests but hail is a cyclic occurrence at about a generation pace and not an increasing trend. We must not be part of the universal warming globality. Good to know.
The first hurricane in the Eastern Pacific, far from land.
?11.6240.8
You can see that the tropopause temperature in the tropics drops to -80 degrees C.
Below is the average temperature chart in the tropics.
You can see that the pressure level of 100 hPa is borderline for troposphere and convection. Above, shortwave radiation dominates.
A minimum atmospheric temperature, or tropopause, occurs at a pressure of around 0.1 bar in the atmospheres of Earth1, Titan2, Jupiter3, Saturn4, Uranus and Neptune4, despite great differences in atmospheric composition, gravity, internal heat and sunlight. In all of these bodies, the tropopause separates a stratosphere with a temperature profile that is controlled by the absorption of short-wave solar radiation, from a region below characterized by convection, weather and clouds5,6. However, it is not obvious why the tropopause occurs at the specific pressure near 0.1 bar. Here we use a simple, physically based model7 to demonstrate that, at atmospheric pressures lower than 0.1 bar,
https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2020?WT.feed_name=subjects_giant-planets&foxtrotcallback=true
The temperature in the stratosphere is only due to UV radiation and shows the process of ozone formation.
The off-topic master strikes again.
Houston Texas. I live here. We only get hailstorms in deep summer. It’s a thing. Getting whacked in the head by a softball-sized hailstone is not fun, but you can do the math. Altitude of the clouds, clear air bands of coldness, it’s gonna happen. If it happened in the Winter you’d call it snow or hail. (Evbil cloud guys, bouncing, nay, juggling hailstones from altitude to altitude, building layers of ice, in protest of Global Warmening. That’ll learn ya, dern ya!) Should have been in Jalisco, though. Margaritas for everyone!
A quick search of Youtube, while looking for video of the “Freak Hail Storm”, showed me that there was nothing “Freak” about it. Because apparently, it happens all the time in that very same city…
Once again, climate change alarmists demonstrate nothing but their lack of knowledge. I have no idea what’s so surprising about hail in the summer. Here in Europe, every time a heat wave ends, it hails. These fell just yesterday in Czechia. A completely normal phenomenon, always has been, always will be.
Xmetman has some historical photos of similar events in the UK: https://xmetman.com/hail-storm-in-guadalajara/
In the winter here in the Midwest, it’s called a slop or slush storm, because it’s too cold to rain and too warm to snow. So the water droplets get bounced around and turn into slush. Sometimes it weighs down the power lines and shuts off the power from the grid. It’s only a big deal if the furnace won’t run.
In the summer, it’s a hail storm. Same thing, if it gets bounced up and down in the storm cloud enough, it can create a lot of damage.
If someone has to pound the climate drum, ask him if he has ever heard of the four seasons that take place on this planet. I’m quite sure you’ll get blank looks.
Sleet is a wholly different phenomenon than hail.
Sleet is just frozen rain droplets.
Hail occurs where thunderstorms grow to great height with strong updrafts within the storm.
To get large stones, the hail must be repeatedly carried up and then fall back down.
The size of the largest stones is a function of the strength of the updraft.
A baseball sized stone had updrafts strong enough to keep a chunk of ice that large from falling.
In about 2006, my car side view mirror, parallel to the ground and protected by a slight overhang, was cracked by hail caught up in strong horizontal winds.
Before science broke free of religious control it was typical for an author to stick on an acknowledgement that whatever the implications of the prior writing, the Church was still in charge.
Just like this writer bowing down to the climate consensus. Then, as now, it was the prudent way for a scientist to stay in their profession and out of trouble.
From the scientist in the article: “Climate change is very real, and humans are a significant cause of our crisis.”
Nope. There is no evidence that is the case. You are misleading people by saying so. Perhaps you were also misled. At any rate, you cannot prove your assertion. Why would a scientist make an assertion for which they have no evidence? I think the only two choices are dishonesty or ignorance. I don’t know which applies in this case.
Absolutely humans are the *sole* cause of the crisis… It’s all in their minds
Roy Spencer has a very good article about this hail storm and hail storms in general on his website. I posted a link yesterday but it seems to have disappeared.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/
Brisbane, Australia has had some scary hail storms over the years.
And wouldn’t you just know it – they all occur is summer (in a sub-tropical climate).
To get large hail, a thunderstorm needs very strong updrafts, and that usually requires very warm air at the surface to feed into the storm over a sustained period of time.
Shepherd talking about caution is a joke, a cheesy attempt at making his alarmism respectable.
Common sense would be good.
Except, as with so many somewhat established alleged authorities, they quickly resort to outright rejection.
Yes, dramatic news sells better than dull news; so reporters emphasize the massive piles of hail Unfortunately, Shepherd goes pompous rejecting virtually everything about the hail while admitting there are pictures of large piles of hail. Typical of dubious climate claims, Shepherd declares his version of events from minimal evidence.
What nonsense is this!?
Marshall Shepherd, immediately leaps from snippets of common sense to full climate alarmism using hysteria and hyperbole to promote his religion while proclaiming consensus authority as gospel.
“What nonsense is this!?
To rephrase Marshall-
“As I browsed the social media, I saw claims of climate change, “end of times” language, and sheer awe that [coral bleaching occurred on the GBR]. I thought that it would be instructive to provide context and perspective on this event before things get too carried away.”
It’s the same old same old even with the good news and then they simply can’t help themselves with the weasel words.
https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/remarkable-coral-recovery-on-southern-great-barrier-reef-island-20190626-p521kv.html
Got it horribly wrong folks BUT…. climate change.
“Climate change is very real, and humans are a significant cause of our crisis. Virtually every credible scientific organization and peer-reviewed report affirms this point.”
If they don’t agree that humans are a significant cause are they then simply not “credible”?
“Significant” – does that mean may be causing or may be contributing to or only “definitely is”? I’d like to see a complete list of these organizations with their exact statement. Do they all say or mean exactly the same thing?
Then there is the “humans are a significant cause” problem. Which human actions specifically are a “significant cause” or is it only a combination of all human activities? More to the Carbon Dioxide emission discussion, what is specifically said about the contribution of those emissions.
I’m sure we could pick this apart more, but the absurdity of it to the well=informed is overwhelming.
As a U.K. friend put it, “I also know that this year there were floods in Sussex, which has never happened before, ever. Apart from every year for the last two thousand.”
– Weather, not climate…
The sheer arrogance of the author is revealed by saying that only research that agrees with him is “credible”. So much for his credibility as a scientist.
Any hail storm I have ever been through where the ground is covered with hail stones also strips the trees bare. I saw lots of pictures with mounds of hail on the ground, but the trees still had most of their leaves. For me, that was a non sequitur. Maybe I just did not look at enough of the photos.
Yeah, I noticed that too (the palm trees look unaffected)). Perhaps the hailstones were small, but the total amount was huge.
I find it fascinating that ONE event can so shift an average, which is what climate is, enough to declare “climate change”. You take 6,000 red balls, through in a blue one, and suddenly, the balls all turn purple. Fascinating, absolutely fascinating.
Nicholas and Mat
A long time ago I recall hearing or reading about “Ayre’s Law”.
If it has happened it can happen.
Gully-washer downpours and in this case hail have likely been happening over geological time.
You sure it wasn’t Sayre’s Law that springs to mind?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law
At an even more general level, if it has a name, it is not a new thing.
“There is nothing new under the Sun.”
“Climate change is very real, and humans are a significant cause of our crisis. Virtually every credible scientific organization and peer-reviewed report affirms this point.” “…linkages are not nearly as compelling (right now) as they are for heatwaves, drought, extreme rainfall, and lack of extreme cold events.”
Significant? Crisis? Virtually every? Compelling as? No skepticism allowed.
There’s the legend of hailstones in the Indian Himalayans the size of small elephants. Yeah, grain of salt.
The Earth is huge. Weather can be violent. There’s almost always someplace at a given time where sh*t is happening.
I remember a disastrous hailstorm in central India in the early 1960’s. Crops are planted after the rains and mature in Feb-Mar. That year hail beat the standing grain into the ground just before harvest, for the local people a serious disaster, but unlike similar events in Behar state, the central region has lots of transportation – rail and road – left by the British, so that there was grain available for those who could sell jewellry and purchase it. In Behar, they are only recently getting enough transportation so that the vagaries of the weather does not cause serious famine.
The most expensive hailstorm in U.S. history, to this point in time, was the June 1984 storm in the northwest Denver metro area. I lived there at the time. My home suffered $12,000 in damage, and 38th and 44th avenues had hail-drifts probably 4 feet deep with cars piled up in a jumble here and there. The storm produced $600 million in total damage, mostly to auto dealerships along Wadsworth.
This is not “end of days”.
How did hail pick up and pile cars into a jumble?
I think that someone above got it right: The aftermath seen was a result of flash floods.
Hail is just falling pieces of ice, and I am hard pressed to see how falling anything stacks cars into a heap.
I was living in Gallup New Mexico in the late 80s when we had a hailstorm that put down 3 feet of hail drifts in the middle of downtown on route 66. It was not unusual. It was given a single photograph and a paragraph long caption in the Albuquerque newspaper.
I suppose that depends on what one means by “unusual”?
It happens, every once in a while for any given location, almost never for other locations.
In addition to the hail forming aloft, it has to get to the ground w/o melting.
There was a summer fish kill from upstream hail in an arroyo in the desert, Texas best I recall. Fortunately it was recorded by Isaac Cline, a meteorologist of some note and sense as there was no evidence of hail with the fish. Not sure of original but reported by—-Larson, E. 1999. Isaac’s Storm: A Man, A Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History. Crown, NY. 323p.
This is weather. Big drifts caused by water running the dramatic hail volume into ever narrowing areas. If this had happened outside the urban area there would be no story.
Every time it is cold and people joke “where is that global warming now, eh?” warmists scold “weather isn’t climate, you idiots!”
They forget this every time it gets hot or there is a storm somewhere. Suddenly then weather IS climate.
I lived in Central Mexico for almost five years. It was not at all uncommon to have hail storms during the monsoon. I’ve not seen that much hail as the photos circulating but I’ve seen inches of it.
I’d have to take issue with Swain saying that a 6ft dump of hail isn’t possible. I remember something of that sort occurred in Colorado Springs CO sometime around 1998 or 99. There wasn’t a rainstorm at all, just some light drizzle that afternoon. It was an extremely localized hail event, right outside the front entrance of University of Colorado CS on Austin Bluffs Pkwy, when a cloud suddenly dropped its load of hail at least 5ft deep, catching several passing cars and encasing them in ice. The area was quite small, perhaps two city blocks. The CSFD and PD had to use picks to dig down to the cars to rescue the drivers, then brought frontend loaders and dump trucks to remove the hail to reopen Austin Bluffs.
As hail falls it melts and absorbs a huge amount of heat energy, cooling the air in the column of falling hail.
So the more localized the event, the more the column is cooled and this allows subsequent hail stones to fall and hit the ground while still frozen.
Also the dynamics of the inflow and updrafts lead to large amounts falling in a small area if a storm is stationary.
There is a good reason for the name Guadalajara. Wadi Al Jara Wadis are a dangerous place to be in a downpour. There are probably some orographic precipitation effects involved I suspect. I have seen a foot or more of fast running water, that was able to move cars, in the streets of Guadalajara. I have also seen highway underpasses filled in minutes.
Don’t think that low altitude Florida just can’t have significant accumulating hail. I very well remember seeing pictures of a hail event in central Florida, near Orlando, if I remember right, where hail accumulated at least a half a foot or more. The ground and parking lots looked like a northern snow. Cars were slipping around, putting deep tracks in the ice. Ice on the ground like that in central Florida blew everyone’s mind. Seems like it was 10-15 years ago.
I imagine the low altitude kept it to the lower amount compared to the recent event. The earth is big, and there is always something happening for the first time somewhere, even in the past. I’m tired of hearing, “Oh, a new temp record” must be climate change.
See above.
Apopka is northwest of Orlando.
Due west of Altamonte Springs.
Just north of west of Maitland.
I can recall reading many years ago that hail is so common in the US (and I am sure anyplace with thunderstorms) that a certain percentage of some crops will be lost to hail every year.
In Cairo (Egypt), more than 60 years ago, the whole of the plaster on the West wall of the villa in which I was living was stripped. Some of the North wall was also pockmarked as if by bullets.
The culprit was a hail storm with stones the size of marbles which started at around eleven o’clock one night. These piled on the roads, the lawns, the flower beds and the balconies to a height of six to eight inches. The piles would have been even higher had it not been that, due to the summer heat, the hailstones were melting rapidly.
Next morning all the gardens in the immediate area had been stripped of their flowers. But gardens and houses less than a mile to the North were unscathed and their residents had not notice been aware of the storm