Impressive Mexico Hailstorm

Joined
Jun 4, 2018
Messages
160
Location
Altus, OK
Saw some stories about a hailstorm in Guadalajara, Mexico that dumped something like 3-5 feet of hail. Apparently they had to use some heavy equipment to clear roads and everything.

Here is a CBS News article: Freak hailstorm dumps up to 6 feet of ice on Guadalajara, Mexico

On the flipside, I also found an article from Forbes that delves into the climatology and cautioned against the strong wording most media outlets were using such as "freak" and "epic" storm. It mentions how most of the deep piles were probably caused by the flash flooding associated with the storm. It also touches on the climate change implications a lot of articles seems to be running with. I found it pretty interesting

 
I have experienced my share of accumulating hailers in my days, most of them in Colorado. I can say from experience, seeing a foot or so of hail accumulate is nothing out of the ordinary there. And I have seen drifts several feet deep.

As Michael mentioned, a lot of the depth from hail often is hail being channeled via flash flooding. The video clip I saw of the semi truck going through the hail clearly shows some flooding beneath the hail layer. I cannot imagine a semi making it through a solid layer of feet of hail. I did a blurb on this on air today and mentioned the "five feet of hail" was likely aided by flash flooding and not actually five feet of hail falling in this storm.

Most hail depth I have measured in a flat area was just over a foot a couple times in Colorado. Below are a couple storms I sat through where they had to break out the plows to clear the hail from the roads.

May 26, 2010 - Hudson, Colorado

June 17, 2013 - Morgan County, Colorado
 
Back
Top