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Name: aina h holmes
Status: N/A
Age: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: 1999


Question:
How can hail (pellets of ice) fall from the sky when the temperature is warm?


Replies:
Hail is formed when ice particles from the top of a cloud fall through the cloud. As the ice particles come in contact with water droplets, the drops freeze onto the ice particles, increasing the size of the ice particles and forming hail.

Hail tends to occur in warm weather because hot air rising from the ground creates the turbulent updrafts and tall clouds necessary to keep the ice particles aloft for a long enough time to form hail.

Other strange but true hail facts:

The largest hailstone reliably measured fell in Kansas in 1970, weighing in at 1.67 pounds--roughly the size of a grapefruit.

A hailstorm outside Paris in 1360 is said to have killed hundreds of English soldiers leading King Edward III to give up his conquest of France.

Hail Alley--a 625-square-mile area located near the meeting of the borders of Nebraska, Colorado, and Wyoming--receives about nine or ten days of hail each year.

The above was taken from "It's Raining Frogs and Fishes" by Jerry Dennis.

grant l



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