Hail Fog

[Tony Laubach]

Back on August 17, Ed Grubb and myself intercepted a series of severe thunderstorms responsible for massive amounts of hail that hit in just about the same areas. We came up to a very impressive scene just east of Byers on US-36 that was quite the display of hail fog. Below are a few images..

Looking east, several miles away.

Looking east, about a mile and change away...

Approaching the western fringes of the core passage.

Buried in the core path.

The July 20 high wind/hail event in western Denver was really eerie thanks to all the power outages combined with the hail fog. The next morning (9 hours after the storm), the hail fog was very evident.

 

[Chris Hayes]

VERY cool images, Tony. We've encountered hail fog on a few occasions while chasing. Most noteably in 2005 during a series of nighttime hailstorms around ICT. However, we've never seen such an impressive fog bank generated from hail. Very cool

 

[Joel Wright]

Wow! Very nice pictures! That's pretty sweet seeing the bank of fog in the distance knowing it's over hail. I've never seen anything like that before. That'd be very interesting to see in person.

 

[Tyler Burg]

Thats sweet, Great work documenting it!

 

[Justin Wiley]

Awesome pics! I wonder how much the temperature dropped.

 

[Tony Laubach]

Awesome pics! I wonder how much the temperature dropped.

37 degrees at one point, but that was in one of the storms after dark.

 

[Allan Jeffers]

Some interesting images here. One of these days I hope to get up near Byers and watch as some storms roll in. I am actualy not too far away, I am near DIA

 

[Jeff House]

Great pictures! Fog lasted all night? Must have created an invesion in the low area, which 37 deg at the surface would definitely support. Amazing how the fog stayed trapped under the inversion. Gotta love Colorado weather.

 

[Paul Sherman]

Great Pictures Tony,

We encountered something similar in Late May this year down on the I-10 Just NW Of San Antonio (Tx) Scattered around were Baseballs and some Grapefruit Sized Hail in the Fields and along I-10 A bank of Fog everytime the road hit an incline or went through a valley, needless to say the trees were stripped bare and also had a mad temperature drop, we also encountered wierd Tower to Tower Lightning on about 3 occasions on our trip back to Fredericksburg.

Paul S

 

[Adam Lucio]

My favorite picture is the 3rd one. It really shows how inches can make a difference as to where severe weather will occur! Awesome stuff.

 

[JeffGonzales]

I like the pics of the hail fog. Here is a pic that i took on 4-16-09 just north of plainview, TX of a tornadic storm. In this pic you can see the hail fog getting sucked into the updraft. This storm produced so much hail that they had to bring out the snow plows just so cars could drive. I hope you enjoy the pic and i also have video of this event that i will try post a link to once i get it all converted.