My first hailstorm!!!!

[Jason Toft]

Yahoo! I'm in Colorado Springs now instead of my normal stomping grounds in St. Petersburg, FL. Went to the Flying W Ranch for dinner and entertaining. They had moved everyone inside because a line of VERY nice thunderstorms structurally and asthetically were moving in. Dang good thing too. Just as dinner was about to be served, buffet style, it started to rain. I made my way thru the line and was looking at the rain and thought, "Man, those ore some big white raindrops aren't they...wait a tec...THAT'S HAIL!!! Woohoo!!" It was absolutely amazing. The ones that hadn't turned to a slushy texture yet STUNG! There were pebble to dime sized hail, with some up near quarter. It was really cool, and quite heavy there for a minute...wow is all I have to say. Thanks for reading my story. This was at about 7:30pm today, June 30th.

Jason

 

[Chris Lott]

That first hailstorm is cool, isn't it! About 5 years ago on my way to work one night in Hillsboro,Tx. I ran into my first hailstorm. It was about 10:00 at night and a huge thunderstorm had developed off to my west. As I exit the highway to go to work, I get slammed with baseball size hail! What an experience. I mean, no rain whatsoever with this storm, just baseball size hail tearing up everything around. It was awesome.

 

[Jimmy Deguara]

Great!!

To me after the prospect of a tornado, hail is the next most exciting feature of storms as the storms are usually well organised to produce hail.

I cannot recall the first time I saw hail but the first time I saw hail >5cm was 1993 and that was a very nice supercell occurring in a very unstable atmosphere.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

 

[robynlowry]

first hailstorm i can remember

Hi everyone. I will try to explain my haistorm experience without boring you all yo death.
3rd/4th grade, (can't remember exact year, time, etc.) in Mitchell, NE we had a pretty good sized storm. The hail was a little bit bigger than a marble, and the rain was coming down pretty heavy. I decided to go have a closer look, 'cause i was tired of looking through dusty windows. Well, I got on my favorite pink raincoat and ran outside before my poor mother realized where i went.
I tell you that was so much fun! Well, except the hail. It hurt pretty bad, like i was getting 10 shots at once! :x
Oh well, it was fun. I later found out that there was an F-1 tornado in that area.
OK. Was that too boring?

 

[Jimmy Deguara]

Hi,

You lucky.... Everything in the US has to tend towards tornadoes

Oh well, it was fun. I later found out that there was an F-1 tornado in that area.

My first experience was in Australia about an hour north of Sydney whilst Sydney had a nice Sunny day in the drier air. Forget tornadoes from what I recall of the storm. Outflow dominant but pretty nice

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

 

[Jason Toft]

I just wanted to add on to this...

I've seen my first mammatus clouds and an overshooting top on some storms on July 1st. Mammatus clouds are GORGEOUS and the overshooting top was really cool!

Jason

 

[Steve Miller TX]

I just wanted to add on to this...

I've seen my first mammatus clouds and an overshooting top on some storms on July 1st. Mammatus clouds are GORGEOUS and the overshooting top was really cool!

Jason

....and a stormchaser is born! Welcome to the family....you'll be staying awhile. LOL! Seeing your first big ominous outflow/shelf cloud resembling "teeth" with a pitch black sky under it will entrance you and still still awes me to this day. Your first rotating wall cloud up close will stick with you too. Then there are the tornadoes. Once to that point, you'll find yourself spending insane amounts of money, shirking responsibilities (work, personal obligations, etc), and driving thousands of miles in a month. You've been warned! :lol:

Congrats on your first hail event!

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

Congrats! As you chase, hail loses it's charm, especially after you blow out a windshield. I realized how used to hail I'd gotten this year when I continued to hold a conversation with another chaser while standing outside of my car and getting pelted by peas.

 

[Derek Lee]

Wow, congrats! My car got its first hail dents on June 17 of this year near Swift Current, SK. I think the hail was around quarter size and quite hard. And I also saw my first overshooting top and backsheared anvil on July 1st. Only bad thing was they were 100km north of me while my dad and me prayed the car wouldn't die. (Plugged fuel filter).

[/endhijack]

 

[StephenLevine]

Alright, Robin, Chris, Jason.. you are inspiring me to share my first significant hailstorm.
After chasing a cell in 1977, between Springfield and Yellow Springs OH (SW Ohio, East Midwest) and getting cloudburst rains, marble hail and great lightning, I returned home to sky the color of spinach to my north.
Slowly this sky seethed in, and what followed was an outburst of 45 MPH winds and nickel hail that reduced visibility to yards and pulled tons of leaves and branchlets to shower out of the trees at the same time. It was so awesome that it moved me to tears.
The storm passed on with huge snowy towers upon deep blue sky over my head.
Chasing hail was one of my past times in Ohio, because hail bigger than nickel or large marble sized was extremely rare.
Now, here in Texas, when I run into hail that big, I get nervous, wondering if it's going to get bigger.