The issue, again, is that unlike the other usual comparisons (peas, ping-pong balls, golf balls), there is no single standard size for a marble, and that is why the NWS would rather have their spotters not use that term.
Below are a couple of pictures from marble manufacturers, showing off the range of sizes that they make. “Marble sized” could mean 10mm, 16mm, 25mm, 35mm, etc.
Yes, but nobody ever describes something 25 mm across as “marble-sized”. If someone says something is “marble-sized”, it’s going to be about 15 mm, plus or minus a couple of mm (and of course, hail is going to have more variation than that anyway).
Apparently, from what I was told at my training class, people actually have done so when they are reporting hailstones to the NWS, and that’s why they ask that their spotters don’t use that analogy when they report hailstones, and instead use analogies for size which are less subject to interpretation.
If someone described “Marble sized hail” that would be close enough for government work, I expect.
Peas are available in a range of diameters too, and after all, the BB is just a specific size of shot - which are available in ought, double ought, 5 gauge, etc. Not everyone is privileged enough to know how large or small a golf ball is either, so that’s right out. Clearly what needs to happen is some sort of arcane, scientifically objective hail size descriptive standard be employed so the pedantics are satisfied.
Around 20 years ago there was a big hailstorm in the Louisville Kentucky area. Most houses in the neighborhood (including mine) had roof damage. For a couple months or so if you went down the street there were several houses getting their roofs fixed/replaced. A week later it was different houses.
Same here, but in the mid west. It was our second home and we weren’t there at the time. They didn’t even do inspections, just notified us they were replacing the roof.
Largest I’ve ever seen was as a kid. We had golf ball and larger size hail. Our house was protected by trees but it really did a job on our crops. We salvaged half if we were lucky.
We had some pea sized hail a couple weeks ago at our lake cabin. We have a ninety degree angle where a set of steps meets two corners of the house. When it was over, I stuck a metal ruler in the pile on the steps and took a picture, almost four inches. I’ll post it later if I remember.
It’s not unusual for communities in Nebraska to get hailstorms that shatter windows and ruin crops.
The most memorable hail experience I had when I lived near Grand Island involved not large hailstones but instead copious hail inches (4" - 6") deep. All melted within an hour.
I know someone that spends the summer with a crew chasing storms in the south. They repair car bodies damaged by hail. Insurance companies notify them because they charge less than body shops since they vacuum pop most of the dents and can do paint repairs when needed.
That storm passed through here in MN on Wednesday. Tennis ball size hail was reported in some areas, we only got tiny stuff.
Biggest hailstones I’ve seen were slightly larger than baseballs. They came down in a rain of smaller stones but, as you can imaging, made huge crashing sounds when they hit our roof. I was very grateful my car was housed in the garage. I ran out and grabbed one to put in the freezer but the freezer was the standard frost-free version and began sucking the wet out of the hailstone (really a conglomeration of smaller stones) so that after a couple of hours, the stone had visibly shrunk.
Define an unlikely time of year. We usually see hail starting in late winter through summer. I don’t recall seeing it in fall or early winter.
Good story. One time, driving west through Wisconsin, I could see mammatus clouds several miles ahead of me on the highway. “Great,” thinks I. “Hail.” But by the time I got up closer to the the locale where I would have to make up my mind to seek shelter, the clouds had smoothed out and moved north so I decided to keep driving.
“Hah!” snickered Mother Nature, “Got her!” She pitched a fastball at me. Only one, but that’s all that was needed. I saw it dropping toward the car and POOM! My windshield caught it almost dead center. It was about tennis ball size and I was lucky it didn’t implode the whole window. I was able to drive the rest of my way home to MN and get the windshield replaced that week. I didn’t see a single other hailstone during the trip, just the one I intercepted. Mother Nature, she be like that.
As I described upthread, hail formation requires a strong thunderstorm, which generates updrafts; those updrafts are fueled by the air at ground level being warm and moist. I also suspect that it requires the air temperature at the base of the cloud to be above freezing, so that the precipitation begins as liquid water (rain), and not snow.
In Minnesota, where it sounds like you live, that’s going to mean that wintertime conditions just aren’t conducive to hail: it’s cold enough, and dry enough (cold air holds a lot less water vapor than warm air) that the vast majority of storms just won’t generate strong updrafts, and precipitation will be falling as snow. So, that makes wintertime, in the Midwest, as being “an unlikely time of year” for hail.
Thank you. I’m rather hoping that hailstones that size never happen around me again. Sometimes I cannot believe that I ran outside to grab one and risked being beaned by another one.
I was at a dance studio a couple of miles away when that hit Mayfest, but it was on the edge of the hailstorm. I only saw a couple of large hailstones, and got one dent from the storm. When I went to work on Monday, 90% of the cars looked like they had the pox.
I’ve been lucky (knock on wood) in that while this area is hail prone, I’ve never had any worse than the one dent. Even when a hailstorm came through the area I was working at and in the company parking lot where I worked, some of the cars lost windows , my car was untouched.
Hailstorm story: I was on a road trip with my first husband somewhere near the NM-AZ border. We were near the bottom of a mesa when a thunderstorm came through. After the storm, we drove to the top of the mesa.
There, we found that the storm had dropped a good inch or more of hail, enough to make the ground white with hail. The hail was turning to mist in the heat. And the hail had battered the sagebrush, releasing the scent into the air.
When I moved to Colorado in 1999 we got some snow in August. The locals said, “That’s weird, it’s never like this.” I’ve heard that every year now for 24 years no matter what the weather has been. I’ve decided this is just an unpredictable place when it comes to weather.
The warmer is the big thing, my wife (a near native) remembers learning to ski in Colorado Springs, during the 80s. Granted, the slope was reinforced with artificially produced snow, and was never a huge resort, but it was a thing (this was on life support by 89, and closed by 91).
The weirder is generally more along the line of more intensity in things that very rarely happened, such as tornados actually touching down in town, or more intense windstorms that previous. But summer hail was never a particularly weird pattern, just one of those, as you point out, quite unpredictable parts of the local climate.
Last week we had a hailstorm. The hail was probably between pea-size and penny size. Our yard was covered. The loud banging it made as it pelted windows, the house, etc. made me think - I can’t imagine what bigger hail would be like. Our boxer and German shepherd were very interested in it. They went out for an inspection after the storm passed. They ate it. The Great Dane was too busy sleeping to be bothered by it!
