Hailstorms

A severe thunderstorm climatology for Australia and associated thunderstorm environments

“…This integration over depth means that CAPE often provides a better overall profile of instability than fixed-layer measures of instability (Blanchard 1998). However, little meaningful distinction has been identified in CAPE values between storms that produce hailstones and those that do not (Knight and Knight 2001). In contrast, the relation of CAPE to potential updraft velocity has been proposed to be useful in distinguishing between non-severe and severe hail (Ryan 1992;Niall and Walsh 2005).…”

Hail events across the Greater Metropolitan Severe Thunderstorm Warning Area

“…Their spatial appearance suggests that they are being probably controlled by the Sydney's bowl-shaped landscape arrangement. Various synoptic-scale features such as lows and fronts can be also associated with severe hailstones (Ryan, 1992;Knight and Knight, 2001). …”

“…Generally the climate of this region arises from a complex interaction of synoptic scale regional and local controls (Ryan, 1992;Kounkou et al, 2009). On the synoptic scale the region is under the influence of mainly drier westerly airstreams in the winter and predominantly moist easterly air streams in the summer months (Linacre and Hobbs, 1977;Knight and Knight, 2001;BoM, 2012b). Each year, many thunderstorms occur in the region, some of which are strong enough to produce one or more of disastrous costly effects in the GMSTWA (Kuleshov et al, 2002;Davies et al, 2008).…”

Numerical Reconstruction of the Masina Lekh Hailstorm Event

“…Hail is a small balls of ice formed in deep convective clouds in extremely low temperatures. Ice grows on initial ice particles by the accretion of supercooled liquid water droplets which freeze on impact (Steiner 1988), pumped into different levels of humidity and water content within updrafts (Nelson 1983) which eventually falls off once its weight overcomes the force of the updraft (Knight & Knight 2001). The size of hail varies from pea shaped to more than 4 inches in their diameter.…”