Freak weather!

[2002EarlMarischal]

Thursday 28 June 2012 1pm Burbage Leicestershire

Following the most extreme local hailstorm I have ever witnessed, both my beautiful 1968 Volvo 1800S and my wife's car are covered in dents. Our loft Velux window outer double glazed panel is smashed too, so three different insurance claims. Other than that it is largely a clean-up exercise which we have already made good headway with.

Pretty much everyone round here has badly damaged cars, many with smashed front or rear windows. Many properties have lost roof tiles, and we know of numerous cases of smashed conservatories and greenhouses.

Clearly we can no longer live in our complacent little world thinking we live somewhere where natural disasters don't happen!

From a personal financial point of view, the timing is bad. The insurance companies seem to be unsure of the cover or level of excess. We may have to find £500 per car or worse...

I was working at a local client yesterday, and observing the storm from there, can confirm that the stories about the size of hailstones are not exaggerated. I have never seen the like in my 51+ years, but a friend's mother says she has not in her 93 years!

I believe the storm was quite local but the internet news reveals serious flooding elsewhere. Did anyone else suffer?

[strang steel]

Large hail is not unknown in the UK, although the window smashing variety only occurs very rarely. The last incidence that I can remember was in North Wales and Cheshire around 1983? (Meteorological brain getting a bit hazy since retirement).

The air was very warm and very humid on Thursday and that is all which is needed for very large clouds to develop, and that means tops to 40,000ft or may be a little more. It is the speed of the upward rising currents of air (updraughts) that are the main driving force behind the severe weather.

Normally, the updraughts can be enough to force hailstones the size of marbles to move up and down in the clouds, but they have to be much faster to keep the hail from falling out until it has reached golf ball size. Each time the hailstone gets swept back up towards the top of the cloud, it picks up moisture which freezes on contact and adds another layer of ice to the hailstone, and it grows bigger and bigger until gravity exceeds the updraught speed.

There were two main zones of severe storms, one was over NE England chiefly Tyneside, and the other seemed to develop around Gloucestershire and then moved northeast across Warwickshire, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire.

As with all severe storms, there are areas embedded within the general cloud mass that are continually developing and decaying due to the release of latent heat, and if you happen to be right underneath one of these areas at the height of its development, then you cop the full force of the thing.

They occur regularly in continental areas, but I think once every 25 to 30 years is enough for somewhere in the UK.

[2002EarlMarischal]

Many thanks for the clear explanation strang steel. It must be my "sad" attitude, but somehow I find it easier to accept these things if I understand why they happened!

Going back to Thursday's events, a work colleague who ventured out to check his car, was caught on the hand by one of the hailstones resulting in a cut and much blood. There are also reports of a couple of ladies who received head wounds. Quite nasty really.

[strang steel]

Good heavens, that does sound as if there was lots going on upstairs in the clouds. Maybe hailstones were colliding with each other and then fusing together to give some jagged edges.

43mm was the largest diameter hailstone that I have heard reported (from somewhere near Coventry), and it was measured and photographed before it melted.

That is 1 and 2/3 inches, which is some beast to have falling out of the sky at near terminal velocity.

[2002EarlMarischal]

Here is one of the hailstones of fairly average size - there were some significantly bigger!

As you can see - real jagged edges! Ouch!

[strang steel]

Thanks for the photo. That is fascinating, (although not if you were hit by them, obviously).

[52D]

I will get permission then post some of the ECML flooding pics from various online friends.

[Blink Bonny]

Ay up!

It wasn't exactly a picnic in Wolves. From bright sunshine to major hailstones with a green sky in about the time it takes to type this message. We left the washing out - it was saturated in seconds. When the rain and hail stopped, it was re-washed.

Both our cats were terrified by it, running and hiding from the rain.

Thankfully, no damage here. My Fifi's as hard as nails and has enough dents, thanks very much!

[PGBerrie]

It's much the same over here in Germany - the most famous hailstorm was the one over Munich in 1984 which left an awful lot of cars with dents and smashed windows, but in recent years there have been an increasing number of reports of local storms with up to a foot of hail and flooding. We are also getting local tornados, unheard of when I first came across in the seventies, which leave the usual trail of damage.

About two weeks ago I took the tram from the border into Basel. It was a bit black as I walked, but nothing special. I sat in the tram then suddenly pang, pang and all hell let loose. Hailstones up to 2 cm diameter, wind and rain. The driver actually set off in the middle of it (Swiss timekeeping?). Hail blocking the drains, leaves and branches everywhere. It was the worst I ever experienced, but the real damage was in the centre about 2km away. Much the same as 2002EarlMarischal reports. Freak weather? I think that we are going to have to get used to it!

Peter

[richard]

The storms we had a few weeks back here in the Dallas area are currently estimated at over a billion dollars in insurance claims from the hail, and may exceed the April tornado outbreak...

We didn't get anything larger than about half an inch at the house. Enough for them to sound the local sirens but no damage to vehicles or the house.
(baseball size+ was quoted but I find local news reports tend to exaggerate as they are based on viewers calling in; Mall skylights were broken and cars acquired the usual dents)

[strang steel]

It's much the same over here in Germany - the most famous hailstorm was the one over Munich in 1984 which left an awful lot of cars with dents and smashed windows, but in recent years there have been an increasing number of reports of local storms with up to a foot of hail and flooding. We are also getting local tornados, unheard of when I first came across in the seventies, which leave the usual trail of damage.

About two weeks ago I took the tram from the border into Basel. It was a bit black as I walked, but nothing special. I sat in the tram then suddenly pang, pang and all hell let loose. Hailstones up to 2 cm diameter, wind and rain. The driver actually set off in the middle of it (Swiss timekeeping?). Hail blocking the drains, leaves and branches everywhere. It was the worst I ever experienced, but the real damage was in the centre about 2km away. Much the same as 2002EarlMarischal reports. Freak weather? I think that we are going to have to get used to it!

Peter

That is the big question. Are these storms really getting more frequent and heavier? Or have instant communication devices become so widespread nowadays that wherever a big storm hits, rural or urban location, a video of it can be posted on Youtube in minutes, or mobile phone photographs will be sent around the world by wi-fi.

On the subject of large hail stones in the USA. There was a video on You've Been Framed once, taken by someone in a boat on a lake and the hail appeared to be about the size of grapefruit. However, it was not falling at the intensity of hail in this country, but just one every few seconds randomly spaced across the lake with great big splashes on the water and the hail stones bobbing back up to the surface.

Must have been a very surreal experience.

[2002EarlMarischal]

Perhaps it's just as well I kept those building site hard hats that I needed many years ago!

Seriously though, I think the point regarding media coverage is well made, however my observation is that here in the UK, the climate is becoming more variable and extreme.

[52D]

Here are a few pics from various friends credited to the photographers. First two Brian Bowden pics are credited here but not in the Daily Star who pinched one. The third is by a NR worker pseudonym William Westerkirk who is a member of my facebook page. The final shot is what the location was like in NER days. Its Scremerston South of Berwick.

[52D]

Further shot of ECML damage between Scremerston and Berwick. Pic Owen Edwards.

[60800]

Well, we can't complain about the lack of water troughs