America's Hail Is Getting Bigger Thanks to Climate Change

Remember when hail was essentially a nuisance, banging around your flower garden? Now we are talking about big chunks of ice capable of writing off cars and dishing out roofs. The weather experts have long noticed a very unappealing trend: the hailstones are growing in size, and climate change might just be to blame (2).

The Science Behind Super-Sized Hail

To understand why hail's getting bigger, one has to look upwards. Basically, hailstones, or hail for short, form when the water droplets get caught up in strong updrafts during thunderstorms. The stronger such updrafts are, the longer the stones can hang out, building up layer by layer. Now, as temperatures continue to rise, contributing to more aggressive storms, updrafts in such conditions get stronger and longer causing larger hail than ever before (4).

Record-Breaking Ice Bombs