I just read where hail is actually formed when rain that is released from clouds goes up instead of down. How bizarre.
From the Old Farmer’s Almanac Online:
When a cloud releases rain, the rain can be forced upward, where it freezes into tiny ice pellets. If updrafts keep buffeting the pellets, layer upon layer of frozen water will be added to the pellets until, finally, hailstones are released.
I have heard of this. It makes sense if you think about it. It has to be cold to form ice. The higher you go in the atmosphere, the colder it gets. During the summer, the air would be too warm to form ice, so the rain would have to go “up” to become hail.
I didn’t know that. I wondered how it could hail on a hot day.
Thanks for this weather ‘trivia’. I’ll have to test my son who is majoring in meteorology if he knows this.
I have one for you-do you know a tomato turns red from the inside out?
Dianne,
I knew it started showing color at the bottom first but never realised it was an inside-out thing.