Dec
8
2011
Are you old enough to remember those big jaw breakers in the candy store? The ones that revealed another color as you dissolved each layer? Well, those jaw breakers had something in common with hail stones. Both were made up by adding many layers – one of candy and the hail stones with many layers of ice.
A hail stone begins with a tiny speck of material, such as dust or smoke. Super cooled water vapor condenses on the speck and freezes as a layer of ice. If the hail (speck) falls, due to the to the added weight of the coating of ice, it will gain another layer of super cooled water and immediately freeze as another layer of ice. Again, strong updrafts toss the hail upwards into freezing air and downwards, picking up an additional layer of ice. If you could cut the jaw breaker in half, and the hailstone in half, you would see layers of candy and many layers of ice, on the hailstone. How large the hailstone is when it falls from the sky, depends upon the number of times it is carried up and down by the strong up and down drafts of the thunderstorm. You can imagine how strong these drafts must be to toss up a baseball size hail stone for another coating of ice.