A hail climatology of the greater Sydney area and New South Wales, Australia

Abstract

The first in-depth hail climatology for the state of New

Climatology of Severe Hail in Finland: 1930–2006

“…This increase in the number of cases is mostly due to the more efficient collection of reports by FMI, more widespread interest in severe weather among the general public and media, more systematic reporting of hail by the storm spotters, and advanced technology (e.g., mobile phones, digital cameras, easy data transfer via e-mail, Internet, etc.). A similar trend of increasing hail reports is also occurring in the United States (Schaefer et al 2004) and southeastern Australia (Schuster et al 2005). Thus, the Finnish dataset appears to be more consistent from year to year during the last 10 years.…”

“…The number of cases has risen considerably in recent years, mostly due to the increase of marginally severe-hail reports, the storm-spotter network, the growing interest in severe weather among the general public and media, and rapid means of communication (e.g., mobile phones, computers, digital cameras). The same kind of trend has been seen in the hail data from the United States (Schaefer et al 2004) and southeastern Australia (Schuster et al 2005). This project also spurred FMI to collect reports in real-time via a hail-reporting form, with the goal of increasing the hail dataset in the future.…”

“…We speculate that, if the environment were otherwise favorable for supercells, the absence of any convective inhibition would lead to early and widespread convective initiation, diminishing the likelihood of isolated supercells with intense updrafts to aid in the production of severe hail. The afternoon and early evening reports of hail are typical all around the world (e.g., Paul 1980; Dessens 1986; Webb et al 2001;Fraile et al 2003;Schaefer et al 2004;Schuster et al 2005;Zhang et al 2008). There have also been well-defined nighttime maxima in hail cases in some areas of the United States and China (Schaefer et al 2004;Zhang et al 2008).…”

“…Second, many climatological studies in Europe are related to hail-pad reports that record all hail sizes, not just the larger severe-hail cases (2 cm in diameter or larger). Third, most climatologies (e.g., Dessens 1986;Sá nchez 1996;Giaiotti et al 2003;Schuster et al 2005) examine only a small part of each country because of the vulnerability of agriculture or the location of a hailpad network, for example. Consequently, the number of nationwide hail climatologies is relatively few.…”

Hail events across the Greater Metropolitan Severe Thunderstorm Warning Area

“…These storms can far exceed maximum hail sizes larger than 7 cm and sometimes cause injuries and even deaths (EMA, 2009). In the past, many hail events were reported from the Sydney metropolitan area, a densely populated area (Mitchell and Griffiths, 1993;Schuster et al, 2005). It is reasonable to state that many other areas of New South Wales (NSW), in particular the remote coastal and mountainous areas, are equally if not more at risk from these destructive hail occurrences (Natural Disasters Organisation, 1989;Leigh and Kuhnel, 2001).…”