hail and thunderstorms

Hail is a gem made of water. It’s different from sleet (freezing rain) or an ice cube. Hail happens when winds high in the sky toss raindrops up and down through layers of air of varying temperatures. The raindrops freeze, melt a little, freeze, pick up more rain, freeze again. If you examine a piece of hail before it melts, you’ll see the layers of water that went into the creation of this icy gift from the sky.

The end product that comes pelting to the ground, your roof, your windshield, your corn field is a generally spherical (ball-shaped) object of ice. I suspect pea-sized is most common. You hear now and again of ‘golf ball sized hail’. I’m fortunate not to have experienced that!

At ground level, the temperature does not have to be at freezing or below for hail to occur. The cold temps are in the air currents above - it can be 80 degrees Fahrenheit outside when hail is falling. Sometimes there is so much hail it covers the ground like a thin blanket of snow. More often, it’s just a few little pellets mingling with the rain that is falling.

The storms that bring hail are often dramatic, with wind and lightning and thunder. Though I haven’t experienced this in years, when I was a kid, there was a kind of ‘high’ or intoxicated feeling that preceded a real storm. The air would turn an odd shade of green, and the smell was bright. We were taught in science class that the lightning stripped oxygen in the air of some of the electrons. The number of protons in the nucleus (positive charge) no longer matched the number of electrons (negative charge) - the oxygen in the air was thus unstable and this was called ozone. (This is a very primitive description. Also - a digression -I'm not clear if the word ozone as in 'ozone layer' refers to the same thing as the charged air before a storm.)

So, you could tell when an exciting storm was soon to blow in by the dark clouds, the flickering of lightning against the dark approaching clouds, the thunderous rumble, the greenish air, and the energizing smell of the air. The frisky, distinctive odor seemed to break up that which was stagnant, both in the atmosphere, and in one’s mind. An average storm (not a hurricane or tornado) was not generally considered a bad thing – it left trees and buildings clean and wet, the air smelling fresh, water for the birds and beasts and gardens, with only a few damp twigs, leaves, and branches on the ground to show for its brief passing.