Homely Scientist

I submitted my Mad Hatter post to the Grand Rounds Blog Carnival for this week and holey smokes they accepted it!

This week I happen to be in the hometown of this week’s Grand Rounds Blog Carnival, Boston!  Which, of course, is my hometown as well.

Given that I’m traveling I’m a wee out of the loop on the old science news.  Though I did catch on CNN that there was golf ball, and larger, sized hail in Oklahoma yesterday.

What causes hail, you might ask?  Hail is really very cool (ha, ha I know).  First think of a thunderstorm as a giant convection oven.  Lots of air circulating around and around (up and down, of course).  In large thunderstorms, the up portion has reach thousands of feet in the air, where it’s very cold.  So, to form hail water droplets get forced back up into the top of the thunderstorm and freeze, making an ice pellet.  The pellet falls again and then gets pushed back up and another layer freezes on.  Eventually the up drafts pushing the hail stone up can’t overcome our old friend gravity, and fall.  The weather person on CNN said this morning that it takes a 100 mph updraft to push a baseball sized hail stone up into the top of the storm.

So, if you get big hail stones this summer, grab some and toss them in the freezer.  Then once refrozen solid, you can saw them in half (hacksaw might be good) and you might be lucky enough to see the layers of ice that make the stone up.  Cool, eh?

Catch you later … time to hit America’s Technology Highway … Route 128!

Tags: Hail, Grand Rounds Blog Carnival, Boston, Route 128

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