HAILSTORMS
- GEOGRAPHY
News:
As unseasonal rains
batter Maharashtra, Ajit Pawar hits out at government’s apathy towards
farmers
What's
in the news?
●
Unseasonal showers and hailstorms have
ravaged cropland in a number of districts in Maharashtra, particularly the northern area, including parts of
Nashik and Dhule districts, as well as in western Maharashtra, including Pune
and Thane districts.
●
Unseasonal rains with hailstorm over the
past two days have caused massive damage to crops at several places in Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.
Hailstorms:
●
A hailstorm is a thunderstorm that produces ice as precipitation.
●
Hailstorms can cause serious damage to
crops and property.
Features:
●
Unlike other forms of water ice
precipitation, such as graupel (which is made of rime ice), ice pellets (which
are smaller and translucent), and snow (which consists of tiny,
delicately-crystalline flakes or needles), hailstones
usually measure between 5 mm (0.2 in) and 15 cm (6 in) in diameter.
●
Hail is possible within most thunderstorms
(as it is produced by cumulonimbus), as well as within 2 nmi (3.7 km) of the
parent storm.
Formation:
●
Hail formation requires environments of strong, upward motion of air with the
parent thunderstorm (similar to tornadoes) and lowered heights of the freezing
level.
●
In the mid-latitudes, hail forms near the interiors of continents, while,
in the tropics, it tends to be
confined to high elevations.
●
Hailstones generally fall at higher speeds
as they grow in size, though complicating factors such as melting, friction
with air, wind, and interaction with rain and other hailstones can slow their
descent through Earth’s atmosphere.
Favorable
conditions for a hailstorm:
Hail forms in the strong
updraft region of a thunderstorm. Atmospheric conditions favourable for the
formation hail bearing thunderstorm are:
●
High degree of instability
●
High moisture content
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Low freezing level
●
High vertical wind shear.
Hailstorms
and India:
●
In
India, hail storms mostly affect the northeast and western Himalayas, with the
maximum strikes in March and April.