HAILSTONE SCIENCE.

North Otago Times, 3 September 1910, Page 3 (Supplement)

HAILSTONE SCIENCE.

Science teaches us that i! it were not for the countless millions of dust particles that float, separately invisible, in the atmospheroj there would be no hailstones, no snow, and no rain, From a perfectly dustless atmosphere the moisture would descend in ceaseless rain without drops. The dUBt particles servo as nuclei about which vapour gathers. The snow crystal is the most beautiful creation of the aerial moisture, and the hailstone is the most extraordinary, The heart of every hailstone is a tiny speck of dust. Such a speck, with a little moisture condensed about it, is the germ from which may be formed, a hailstone capable of felling a man, or smashing a window, But first it.must be caught 1 up by a current of air, and carried to the level of the lofty cirrus clouds, five or six, or even ten, miles high. Then, continually growing by fresh accessions of moisture, it begins its long plunge to the earth, spinning through,the cloud, and flashing in the sun like a diamond bolt shot from a rainbow.