BIG HAILSTONES.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3463, 31 March 1930, Page 2

BIG HAILSTONES.

Hailstones “as big as grapefruit” are said to have fallen at Potter. Nebraska. on July G. 1928. Ibis, says Charles Fitzhngh Talnian. in his Science Service feature Why the Weather? ('Washington), established a new American record for size, so far as well-authenticated and trustworthy statistics go.

The largest one that was measured, weighed and photographed on that occasion, was seventeen indies in c-irc-nm ference, with a weight of one and onehalf pounds. He goes on : “It is likely that bigger hailstones have sometimes fallen in this country, and a storm in which this may have happened was the one that occurred in the same State ol Nebraska on June 20, 1881. Strange to say. the details of this storm have only just been ■brought to the attention of the scientific world.

“No reference to the event is found in Weather Bureau records, nor is it mentioned in the list of destructive hail-storms published in Greely’s ‘American AVoather.’ which describes live other storms ol that year. According to a description which the Bulletin ol the American Meteorological Society* reprints Irom -the Omaha Dec. the storm was attended by high winds and torrential rain as well as bail, and caused immense damage in Thayer and Jefferson counties. At Alexandria, Thayer County, according to this story: ‘Not only were the sidings ol houses broken, but the “pieces of ice” that fell actually pierced the sidings and the roofs of tbo bouses and pelted the inmates . . . breaking dishes and smashing I nrnitnre.

“Outside the buildings the falling ice killed cattle, horses, hogs, dogs, and chickens. Accompanied by a tornadolike wind, the hailstones levelled all the growing crops, stripped trees of fruit and foliage, and bruised and battered human beings who were caught in it. Stories were told of persons who tried to save live stock from the fury of the storm being knocked down and sustaining broken bones when struck by the lingo hailstones. The stones were said to ho jagged lumps of ice, some of them as large as small heads of cabbage.”

In a subsequent number. Air Talnian notes that things arc not always what they seem, and a big lump of ice found on the ground after or during a hailstorm is not always a hailstone. Generally It' is the result of a process called “regelation,” which causes two or more hailstones lying closely packed together, after falling, to merge into a single mass. Sometimes it is something else. He illustrates: “Last August there was a tremendous hailstorm at Hartford, Connecticut. While the icy fusillade was at its height employees of business houses were standing in the shelter of doorways watching the particles rattle down on the pavement. A venturesome youth secured one the size of a hen’s egg: which, of course, is nothing unheard-of. Presently he spied one bigger than a baseball, but still within the recognised limits of size. Running out to pick this up. he narrowly escaped being annihilated by a chunk of ice more than six inches in diameter. This case does* not •establish a new world record for hailstone magnitude, because the chunk in question came out of a water-cooler and not out of tlie skv.

■ “Practical jokers on an upper lloor wore amusing themselves at the expense of the people watching the hailstorm in the street below.’’