Hail

“ I may have been stunned for a moment. A pitiless hail was hissing round me, and I was sitting on soft turf in front of the overset machine. Everything still seemed grey, but presently I remarked that the confusion in my ears was gone. I looked round me. I was on what seemed to be a little lawn in a garden, surrounded by rhododendron bushes, and I noticed that their mauve and purple blossoms were dropping in a shower under the beating of the hailstones. The rebounding, dancing hail hung in a little cloud over the machine, and drove along the ground like smoke. In a moment I was wet to the skin. ”

“ On the top of the world the storms work all their fury. Only there come mist and wind and rain, thunder and lightning and hail together—the pitiless terrible hail: there, where the hare hiding in the grass may know it is the highest thing in all God’s world, and nearest to the storm—the one clear mark to draw the lightning—and, knowing, scurries to the sheltered slopes. ”

“ Hail is formed by the falling rain being frozen in its descent, or when different currents meet in the atmosphere. A hail-storm is accompanied with a rushing sound, as if the hail-stones were striking against each other. ”

“ An arm of the storm reached over to us, the cauldron sank from sight in a white sea, and the hail cut my face so{154} I bowed it down. Mixed with the hail fell softer flakes, which, as they touched the earth, glowed for a moment like tiny bulbs, and went out. On the ground I saw what looked like a tangle of old, human footprints in the hard-crusted mud. ”

“ For some minutes I lay there in the rain and darkness watching, by the intermittent light, these monstrous beings of metal moving about in the distance over the hedge-tops. A thin hail was now beginning, and as it came and went their figures grew misty and then flashed into clearness again. Now and then came a gap in the lightning, and the night swallowed them up. ”

“ Fog, snow, and hail made our lives miserable, and between the everlasting ferrying over open leads and the plowing through pools of surface slush, we kept our clothes continuously soaked in ice water. ”

“ The storm of the hour is lengthened into one of days. It becomes a deluge of judgment on the earth. The words say seven days, but in such poetic discourse seven might perhaps simply mean “many”. Finally, there is a decided change in the scene. The flood has passed away. The death-destroying hail-storm falls upon us, not simply the little hail-stones, but the great hail-stones. ”

“ In a wild attempt to drive away the hail clouds, he fights against the mountain, but it often happens that the overwhelming host comes gloomily upon him with thunders roaring and flashes of lightning that seem to shake the ground under him and rend the sky above, and the volleys of big hailstones follow, pouring down thick and fast, like arrows flying in the thick of battle. ”

“ Of half-thawed hail mixed with half-frozen spray,
The roaring canvas like a thing alive,
Shaking the mast, knocking their hands away,
The foot-ropes jerking to the tug and sway,
The savage eyes salt-reddened at the rims,
And icicles on the south-wester brims.
And sunnier scenes would grow under his brush,
The tropic dawn with all things dropping dew,
The darkness and the wonder and the hush,
The insensate grey before the marvel grew;
Then the veil lifted from the trembling blue,
The walls of sky burst in, the flower, the rose,
All the expanse of heaven a mind that glows. ”

“ It seemed to advance and to recede as the hail drove before it denser or thinner. At last I tore my eyes from it for a moment, and saw that the hail curtain had worn threadbare, and that the sky was lightening with the promise of the sun.
"I looked up again at the crouching white shape, and the full temerity of my voyage came suddenly upon me. What might appear when that hazy curtain was altogether withdrawn? What might not have happened to men? What if cruelty had grown into a common passion? ”

“ Consumes with sound more terrible to man
Than Delphic laurel of Apollo lord.
Oft, too, the multitudinous crash of ice
And down-pour of swift hail gives forth a sound
Among the mighty clouds on high; for when
The wind hath packed them close, each mountain mass
Of rain-cloud, there congealed utterly
And mixed with hail-stones, breaks and booms...
*****
Likewise, it lightens, when the clouds have struck,
By their collision, forth the seeds of fire:
As if a stone should smite a stone or steel,
For light then too leaps forth and fire then scatters
The shining sparks. ”

“ Not a sound breaks the magic of repose. What is that—a strange, pattering noise, as of a million of fairy feet? It is hail—yes, a hail-storm has burst over the city. Leaves are dashed from the trees, mingled with small boughs; windows that lie most opposed to the direct fury of the pelting particles of ice are broken, and the rapt repose that before was so remarkable in its intensity, is exchanged for a noise which, in its accumulation, drowns every cry of surprise or consternation which here and there arose from persons who found their houses invaded by the storm. ”

“ Colder and colder grew the air with a strange, unnatural feel in it as if in the proximity of icebergs, or of the hour closest on dawn, and the hail, at first small and round, pretty and harmless, came gently chattering about the horse's ears and back, came faster and larger, came at last too fast and too large, came as stones come that are flung by enemies and rioting mobs of people anxious for vengeance. ”

“ Even as the slinger distinctly sends the stone out of his sling, so the path of every hailstone is marked by the Divine power. The ice is called, you observe, his ice; and in the next sentence we read of his cold. These words make nature strangely magnificent. When we look upon every hailstone as God's hail, and upon every fragment of ice as his ice, how precious the watery diamonds become! ”

“ Then again utter darkness covers the earth, when suddenly a column of light appears, like the trunk of some tall pine, as the electric fluid passes from the upper to the lower regions of the world. The next instant its blazing summit breaks into splinters on every side. Occasionally fearful hail-storms sweep over the plains; and at other times the air from the south comes heated, as from a furnace, drying up all moisture from the skin, and parching the traveller’s tongue with thirst. ”

“ The Sulphurous Hail Shot after us in storm, oreblown hath laid The fiery Surge, that from the Precipice Of Heav'n receiv'd us falling, and the Thunder, Wing'd with red Lightning and impetuous rage, Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now To bellow through the vast and boundless Deep. ”

“ The morning after the hail storm, when the solid layer of ice the hail had formed over the ground was melting, and crackling like a huge bonfire, we found that our neon "office" sign had a tiny hole in the top of it. About the time Grant was telephoning Oian Rosco, I happened to think of the almond blossoms. If hail could do this to our sign--and presumably it had been a hailstone, a particularly aggressive one, that had done it--what might it not have done to those delicate blossoms? ”

“ It is from this region of perpetual cold that hail-stones descend upon us in the midst of summer, and snow is continually forming and falling there; but the light and fleecy flakes melt before they reach the earth, so that, while the hail has such solidity and momentum that it forces its way through, the snow dissolves, and falls upon us as a cool and refreshing rain. Rain cools the air around us and the ground, because it comes from cooler regions of the air above. ”

“ The very rain, and sleet, and hail seem only Nature’s useful servants when found doing their simple duties in the country; and the East Wind himself is nothing worse than a boisterous friend when we meet him between the hedge-rows. ”

“ Hail is of the size of a very small grain, yet when it falls on a man’s head how much annoyance it gives him! Or, again, take the drop which falls from a pitcher to the ground, and yet it hollows a stone. ”

“ During the winter when there is much snow, these spirits, according to the priests, gather themselves at a certain place, where they make large quantities of hail out of snow. They then store the hail somewhere in heaven, and go to rest, until in the summer when the crops are nearly ripe they throw down the hail from the air. ”

“ When it begins to fall, it is rain; when it is falling, it is converted into hail; so that it is literally true, that it rains hail. The further a hail-stone falls, the larger it generally is; because, in its descent, meeting with innumerable particles of water, they become attached to it, are also frozen, and thus its bulk is continually increasing till it reaches the earth.90 A storm of hail fell near Liverpool, in Lancashire, in the year 1795, which greatly damaged the vegetation, broke windows, &c., &c. Many of the stones measured five inches in circumference. ”

“ We reached the valley free from all harm. The one drawback was, that the hail and rain deluged us from head to foot. Yet this was a trifle, and we could look forward to a roaring fire, dry tents, dry clothes, and a good supper on our return. ”

“ Hail is rain that happens to be caught in a powerful current of rising air as it forms, and is carried up so high that it freezes in the cold, expanding air into little balls of ice, or hail stones, which fall to the ground before they have time to melt.
Why one side of a mountain range usually has rainfall. When air that is moving along reaches a mountain [pg 287] range, it either would have to stop, or rise and go over the mountain. The pressure of the air behind it, moving in the same direction, keeps it from stopping, and so it has to go up the slopes and over the range. ”

“ Soon came a few big drops of rain, then a big wind, and as that lulled, more rain. Then came thunder and lightning, the air grew bitterly cold, and there came a pitiless hailstorm, hailstones bigger than a duck's egg fell, cutting the leaves from the trees and bruising their bark. ”

“ There are often storms in the upper regions which do not get down to the surface of the earth, snow and hail storms particularly. Hail, you know, is supposed to be formed by drops of rain being hurled up and down in a sort of circular, spiral motion through alternate strata of air—first freezing and then warm, which accounts for the onion-like layers seen when a hailstone is cut in half. ”

“ But when the clouds rose, their density rendered respiration difficult: snow and hail fell continually, and the winds returned with such violence, that it was impossible to overcome the fear of being blown down the precipices, or of being buried by the accumulation of ice and snow, or by the enormous fragments of rocks which rolled around them. ”

“ The old man turned, and eagerly watched the hailstones, as they dropped tinkling on the roofs of the outhouses, or, driven aslant [Pg 262] by the wind, crashed hissing against the ground, and, rebounding, rolled across the pebbled yard. The labourers came home to the mid-day meal, and, pausing at the door, shook the hail from their garments. ”

“ A hoarse hail from the forecastle, where a knot of men off rowing-duty huddled under such protection as was provided by the huge, up-curving figurehead and the low bulwarks above the decked storage space. ”

“ The upper regions of the air are not only always{118} colder, but also less dense than those near the surface of the earth; and the white porous nature of hail is owing to the rarity of the atmosphere where they were congealed. ”

“ Why is it supposed that the electrical state of the air and the clouds affects the formation of hail?
Because hail is more common in the summer than at other seasons, and is frequently attended by storms of thunder and lightning.
450. Why do hail-storms most frequently occur by day?
Because the clouds, being charged with vapour to saturation, favour the formation of hail by sudden electrical or atmospheric changes. In the gradual cooling of night, the clouds would expend themselves in rain. ”

“ True hail has a concentric structure caused by the frozen particles of moisture first descending into a warm cloud, whence they are carried upwards on an ascending current of heated air into a cold stratum where the fresh coating of water vapour deposited in the cloud is frozen. ”

“ When, for example, a record of weather occurrences states that hail has fallen, this statement, unequivocal as it may seem to the layman, often raises a question in the mind of the meteorologist. For centuries people talked and wrote about hail before it occurred to men of science to inquire whether one and the same thing was always described under this name. ”

“ Shortly we were caught in a terrific storm of hail, thunder, and lightning, and had the greatest difficulty in keeping our road, and making the horses face the hail, which pelted down with such force as to hurt us very much, and render them frantic. ”

“ Hail, rain, sleet, snow, fog, and every form of bad weather continued for a week on the summit, while it was almost always54 clear below. It was often a remarkable sight to go to the edge and look down. The expanse of “the plains,” which stretched eastward to a horizon line over a hundred miles distant, would be in bright sunshine beneath, while the hail was all around and above us ”

“ Not the sort of spring they give us in these miserable times, under this shameless government—a mixture of east wind, blizzard, snow, rain, slush, fog, frost, hail, sleet and thunder-storms—but a sunny, blue-sky'd, joyous spring, such as we used to have regularly every year when I was a young man, and things were different. ”