We had a brief hailstorm in my area last night. I saw a blog post by a neighbor referring to ping-pong ball sized hail. I have video of the hailstorm which includes me with a handful of it, the largest no more than 3/4" in diameter (I saved some in the freezer). Ping pong balls are more than 1.5" in diameter.
Why are hailstones always overestimated? I’m waiting to hear about hail the size of baby elephants.
I don’t know but you are so right. A few people have said to me that they have been caught in baseball sized hail storms before. :rolleyes:
i suppose the largest hail stone in storm might meet the size reference given. i find it interesting that hail stones are measured as sporting equipment, ping pong ball, golf ball, base ball, etc., while tumors are measrured as fruit, orange, grapefruit, and in extreme cases watermelon.
'Course, smaller stones get measured as coins (e.g.: dimes, nickels).
Watermelon-sized hail; now that’s an image.
How long were they hospitalized?
Don’t be so dismissive of that. I grew up in a hail prone area and the regular ones were pretty bad but one stood out. I was working at my job in the local supermarket in high school when it really did start hailing baseball sized hail. We instantly locked the doors and kept everyone inside until it stopped. Most cars (except mine for some reason) were damaged and about 20 of them lost their windshields. We gathered up some of the bigger ones that landed in grass to keep in the freezer and show people. The car dealership down the street had almost all of its inventory damaged and there was significant roof damage in the area as well.
Breasts too. 
Oh, it does happen. But it’s rare, and as you describe, it’s a serious thing when it does happen. Someone who was “caught” in one would be pretty much certain to sustain moderate injuries at least, and if they didn’t protect their head fast enough, possibly much worse.
I witnessed a maybe tennisball-sized hailstone just once, breaking the windshield of a parked car I was inside. I was damn glad not to have been caught in it.
For some reason weather is one subject that is prone to the most blatant of exaggeration. You should read some of the “What’s the coldest temperature you’ve ever experienced threads” on here. People are claiming 20 to 20 degrees colder than the coldest ever recorded in the state they are talking about.
I was caught in a bad hailstorm in Ft. Collins, CO a number of years ago. I was on a golf course and had just teed off on the 18th hole. A hailstone came down as I was leaving the tee and bounced over my head. More started coming down so we abandoned our golf balls and sprinted to the clubhouse. I held my golf bag in my left arm so the clubheads covered my face. The next day, my arm was a continuous bruise from my wrist over my shoulder and down my shoulder blade. The biggest stones we found were nickel size in diameter.
A golfball size hailstone would break small bones (hands, wrist), I would guess. Probably knock you unconsious as well.
There was a famous hail storm in Fort Worth about 15 years ago - and there were most definitely baseball-sized hailstones in certain areas. (I can’t personally vouch for the softball and grapefruit-sized hail that some people claimed, but I wouldn’t doubt it.) My brothers car was pelted with them, breaking out all the windows and denting up the entire car, including large dents in the steel frame of the car. Nearly every house on our street needed a new roof that year.
Just want to point out that it might be possible for people to not be exaggerating. There are many times that I have experienced temperature extremes well beyond the officially recorded low temperature (or high temperature) for that day.
A case that sticks out in my mind was about 10 years ago give or take. I was in my living room and noticed that it felt like the temperature inside the house was getting warmer, even though the AC unit was running. I thought the AC might be going out, so I felt the air coming out of the vent and it was as cold as always.
In the kitchen, I had one of those thermometers that tells the temperature outside via a wire run from the thermometer to the outside. Admittedly, these are not known for their accuracy, but this thermometer had never been grossly inaccurate. It read 129 degrees. This was on the NE side of the house (In the shade)
I went out to the back porch (covered, screened in, and shaded) and the thermometer there read 127 degrees. The highest ever officially recorded temperature in the nearest town (about 10 miles away) was 114 degrees
As to the OP, hailstorms can vary considerably over a very short distance. I’ve even seen the size of hailstones vary from the backside of my property to the road. One particularly impressive hailstorm saw the roof of a shed on the backside totally destroyed, along with massive dents in a lawnmower (including the engine) that was left out. The mailbox by the road didn’t even get a ding. In town, they didn’t even know there was a hailstorm.
I wonder what these people thought of the hailstorm that they experienced?
Hail the size of balls! What kind? Balls, man. Balls.
Really, I’d love to see something described as testicle-sized hail.
Not to mention farmers, who never seem to have a good year, weather-wise. It’s like the weather every year is bad for them. Too much rain, too little rain, tornadoes, El Nino, La Nina, global warming, global cooling, whatever … it’s always something.
It’s over a longer distance than the OP, but earlier in the year Melbourne had a big hailstorm which over our house was around the 3/4"-1" range, but were almost double that half an hour drive from us. Our house and car were unscathed; our friends lost all the windows along the front of their house, and the car was almost written off with the damage to the roof and bonnet.
Also, they could have been inside a freezer. My dad has worked at a place where it was kept around -30[sup]o[/sup] or so. (Pick a scale, they’re both close enough.)
Reminds me of the passage in Bored of the Rings where they describe “a diamond-shaped pear and a plover’s egg the size of an emerald.”