Spiked Hail in Texas

I'm sure you've seen on the news about the huge storms moving through the midwest the past few days.

From northeast Texas, spiked hail fell from the skies:

dfw.cbslocal.com...

I've never seen anything like this (I grew up in Texas, with frequent hail storms). Can anyone offer an explanation?


[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/699ee5357e21.jpg[/atsimg]

I have never seen hail like that. I wonder what types of conditions have to exist for these to be formed in this spiked form instead of the usual spherical shapes. Nice find s&f

reply to post by Schkeptick


en.wikipedia.org...

The storms passing through seem to be very strong, and I can imagine high winds having something to do with the outcome of the shape of the hail as it falls through the sky. As hail falls it catches other water particles that can freeze to it.
It's not very well understood but it has been documented as far as the 1700's that such odd shapes form in falling hail.
Very interesting to see first hand though, it rarely happens!

reply to post by SpectrumSeven

Nice. From that article :

The largest recorded hailstone in the United States by diameter 8 inches (20 cm) and weight 1.93 pounds (0.88 kg). The hailstone fell in Vivian, South Dakota on July 23, 2010.

en.wikipedia.org...

That one in your hand looks almost six inches, so Keep Searching!!

reply to post by SpectrumSeven


That is so damn COOL!


WOW! I am a huge storm nut, I would love to see this in FL! Hope you are ok

Thats pretty cool looking, it almost looks like a small quartz cluster.

Thanks for the links! Growing up I saw hail so big it totaled cars that were trapped on the highways in Dallas. But never anything as funny shaped as that.

That isn't me in the pic - it's from the news story (see link). I don't live in Texas now but my family has been threatened by the fires so I've been keeping a close eye on the weather news there.

It's a real mess in the midwest right now.

yeah im here in central texas (that oughta be vague enough ) and yesterday or the day before a friend only a hundred miles north or so said it randomly started hailing, while it was 90 degrees and sunny where i was. not impossible, just really weird.

i bet the fires have something to do with this. fire creates strange wind, and hail is caused by updrafts. basically droplets of water hit windstreams that take them high enough to freeze. this process continues or repeats until the hailstone is heavier than the wind can lift. so it makes sense that a hailstone would have a basically even density, like a snowball consistently gathering mass in a cartoon.

what you would need for crystals to form would be i dont know, either maybe flash freezing super humid sections of air or random density variations that caused certain parts of a spherical piece of ice to melt in an uneven way, leaving a crystalline looking form behind.

That's not hail. That's kryptonite!

Ok, just kidding. Aside, it does look quite interesting. I would imagine that it was formed by liquid drops contacting the hail and adding to the spikes.

reply to post by SpectrumSeven


Wow, that is very cool and looks very deadly, if it were to hit you on the head.

I just heard on CNN that there is GRAPEFRUIT size hail somewhere in Tennessee!

eta... not CNN - The Weather Channel.. sorry I just got up