Hailstone

“ Neither is this at all to be wondered at, because nature, in that country, observing the same proportion through all her operations, a hailstone is near eighteen hundred times as large as one in Europe ”

“ 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! ”

“ The manner of the formation of the hailstone is conjectural. About the only thing of which one may be certain is that the hailstone is alternately in layers of moist air below the freezing point and layers of warmer air—that is, it is whirled through alternate layers of snowy air and of misty air. The updraught that occurs during thunder-storms shows that such a movement takes place in cumulo-nimbus clouds; and when the hailstones become too heavy to be carried by the updraught they fall to the ground.
Hailstones usually vary in size from a quarter of an inch ”

“ Charms against hail had therefore in the old heathen times a prominent place in the popular beliefs and, there can be little doubt, are still trusted in and used by many of the more ignorant people. Occasionally the hailstones are of very large size and kill sheep and small animals, if they are left unsheltered. I remember a storm of this kind, when the hailstones were as large as good-sized nuts, while some were cushion-shaped and hexagonal, with a hollow in the centre, and nearly one and a half inches in diameter. ”

“ The hailstone descends again, receives a fresh coating, is carried up once more, refrozen, and again descends. Thus the hailstone grows until the current is no longer strong enough to support it when it falls to the ground. At times masses of hail are frozen together, and a very sudden cooling will sometimes result in the formation of ragged masses of ice that fall with disastrous results. ”

“ A summer hailstorm was much more to be dreaded, however; for nowhere else on the earth do the hailstones shoot from the clouds of greater size or with greater velocity than in the Rocky Mountains. Such an event invariably frightened the mules and caused them to stampede; and, to escape death from the coach rolling down some frightful abyss, one had to jump out, only to be beaten to a jelly by the masses of ice unless shelter could be found under some friendly ledge of rock or the thick limbs of a tree. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hailstones are notable in these regions of snow-mountains, and the hail I saw in Nepāl was very large. I dug out some imbedded in the snow, and found many as large as a pigeon’s egg; while it was said that at the time of falling they must have been as large as a hen’s egg.
It is hardly credible that such large stones come down like rain; but I believe it to be true from actually seeing some imbedded ones as large as pigeon’s eggs. Many people coming from Darjeeling and Tomo-Rinchen-gang for trade declare that what I have said about the size of a hailstone is true. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Large hailstones are composed of alternate layers of clear crystalline and white porous ice, and many of them consist of an aggregate of smaller hailstones which have attached themselves to one stone as a nucleus, and then the mass so formed has received external coatings of ice. ”

“ When this rock is seen projecting in round bosses, through the turfy soil of a hilltop, it looks at a short distance as if strewn with hailstones; and the illusion is heightened on observing on its leeward side heaps of loose quartz crystals, which have been completely weathered out from the parent rock, and have been drifted by the wind into this comparatively sheltered situation, as would be the case with hailstones under similar circumstances. ”

“ Thunder-storms are generally accompanied by falls of hail as well as rain, and these hailstones assume the form of lumps of ice—some even as large as hens' eggs, and weighing several ounces, having been known to fall. The stories of masses of hailstones, weighing many pounds, having been found after storms, are explained by the fact that the hailstones, after they have fallen, may have frozen to each other and formed a solid lump on the ground. ”

“ Hailstone; sectional view.
to half an inch in diameter. They are very rarely as much as an inch in diameter. In a few instances single stones more than two inches in diameter have been reported. In many instances several hailstones are frozen together, and hailstones “as large as a hen’s egg” are formed in this manner. Hail-storms are rarely more than a few minutes in duration. They occur usually in the southeast quadrant of a cyclonic storm, having the same relation to the area of low barometer as does the tornado. ”

“ If then the absence of hail within the torrid zone, at the level of the sea, be produced by the melting of the hailstones in crossing the lower strata of the air, we must suppose that these hail-stones, at the moment of their formation, are larger in the temperate than in the torrid zone. We yet know so little of the conditions under which water congeals in a stormy cloud in our climates, that we cannot judge whether the same conditions be fulfilled on the equator above the plains. ”

“ At five o’clock this afternoon we had a violent shower of hailstones. Nothing is more common than aggravation about the size of hail; but, stooping to take up one I thought as large as a nutmeg, I received a blow from another just under my eye, which I imagined had blinded me, and which occasioned a swelling all the next day.
I had gained the Baharnagash’s heart so entirely that it was not possible to get away the next day. We were upon the very verge of his small dominions, and he had ordered a quantity of wheat-flour to be made for us, which he sent in the evening, with a kid. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hail appears to be formed in the violent updraft of air at the front of a thunderstorm. In this turbulent region the hailstone, first frozen at a high level, probably makes several journeys alternately up and down, as it encounters stronger or weaker rising currents; at one time gathering a coating of snow aloft, and at another a coat of ice from the rain below, until finally, on account of its large size or on account of a weakening of the upward blast, it falls to the ground. ”

“ Frozen precipitation consisting of ice balls or irregular lumps of ice of varying size, ranging from that of a raindrop to an inch or considerably more. They are composed of clear ice or of alternate layers of ice and snow, and may fall detached or frozen together into irregular lumps. Hail is usually associated with thunderstorms. A hailstone is a single unit of hail. Small hail consists of snow pellets surrounded by a very thin ice covering. ”

“ Hailstones in India are said to be very large—from five to twenty times larger than those in England or America—seldom less than walnuts and often as large as oranges and pumpkins. It is recorded that in 1826, during a hailstorm at Candeish, the stones perforated the roofs of houses like cannon shot, and that a single mass fell that required several days to melt, weighing over 100 pounds. It is further recorded that on May 8, 1832, a conglomerate mass of hailstones fell in Hungary a yard in length and nearly two feet in thickness. ”

“ Far and wide was a white carpet, knee deep, of hailstones; drifts of them were heaped up under the eaves and on the steps. When, three or four days later, those hailstones melted, the havoc they had wrought was plainly seen, for every green growing thing in field or garden was cut off. ”

“ If not conceivably could very large hailstones and lumps of ice form in this earth's atmosphere, and so then had to come from external regions, then other things in or accompanying very large hailstones and lumps of ice came from external regions—which worries us a little: we may be instantly translated to the Positive Absolute. ”

“ Soon dense masses of lurid clouds came rolling up, and a crackling, like the rattle of musketry, resounded through the air. This was produced by a series of electrical concussions, in which volleys of hailstones were discharged from the cloud-batteries above. In fact, as the storm-sheet came in contact with a current of cold air, hail was formed with great rapidity, and hailstones, large as nuts, came pelting down, making the platform of the raft re-echo with a metallic ring. ”

“ Hailstones are made in quite a different way from snow flakes. Snow falls only in the winter, but hail storms come in summer, on hot days. Weather men think that when rain drops are formed in clouds, and are all ready to fall, they are suddenly pulled up much higher, into freezing air. The rain drops freeze but do not burst. Then they fall through other rain clouds, and more water freezes on the balls of ice. They are tossed up and down until they become so heavy that they drop like bullets. They drop so fast that they pass through the warm air near the earth without melting. ”

“ But soon the heavy fall of hail overtook them, and they were glad enough to seek even the slight shelter of a deep washout, where men and horses huddled close together for protection. The hailstones came down as large as marbles, causing the horses to jump around in a fashion that was particularly dangerous to themselves and to their owners. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of the ice that fell, some of it enclosing living frogs, at Dubuque, Iowa, June 16, 1882, it is said (Monthly Weather Review, June, 1882) that there were pieces from one to seventeen inches in circumference, the largest weighing one pound and three-quarters—that upon some of them were icicles half an inch in length. We emphasize that these objects were not hailstones.
The only merger is that of knobby hailstones, or of large hailstones with protuberances wrought by crystallization: but that is no merger with terrestrial phenomena, and such formations are unaccountable to orthodoxy ”

“ They strike with the force of enormous hailstones—stunning and blinding us. The next moment there is no distinction of drops, the windows of heaven are opened; it is no longer rain nor flood, but a sea, a cataract, a Niagara. The hillock on which I am standing, undermined by the waters, gives way and crumbles under me ”

“ The size of some hailstones has worried many meteorologists—but not text-book meteorologists. I know of no more serene occupation than that of writing text-books—though writing for the War Cry, of the Salvation Army, may be equally unadventurous. In the drowsy tranquillity of a text-book, we easily and unintelligently read of dust particles around which icy rain forms, hailstones, in their fall, then increasing by accretion—but in the meteorological journals, we read often of air-spaces nucleating hailstones——
But it's the size of the things. Dip a marble in icy water. ”

“ Even the upper strata of atmosphere are not free from microscopic forms of life, as has been shown in experiments made with hail at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1890 by Dr. Abbott. Large hailstones were washed in distilled and sterilized water, and then melted, and cultures made from different layers; in all of these organisms were found, showing that they extend into the air a long distance from the earth. ”

“ That freezing temperatures are necessary for the formation of hail has sometimes led people to conclude that the hailstones must have necessarily come from the far north, falling as they do on days when the heat has been oppressive. True hailstones occur only with storms of the thunderstorm type, where violent convection extends to heights of five miles or more above the ground. Here the ascending currents are occasionally so strong that they carry aloft, far beyond the level of permanent freezing temperature, particles of moisture already condensed into raindrops. ”