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posted by Fnord666 on Friday May 01 2020, @06:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the need-a-stronger-umbrella dept.

'Gargantuan' hail in Argentina may have smashed world record:

A supercell thunderstorm pelted a city center in Argentina a few years ago with hailstones so large scientists suggested a new category to describe them — gargantuan hail.

Researchers investigating the 2018 storm found one hailstone likely measured between 7.4 and 9.3 inches across, potentially setting a new world record. The current record belongs to a hailstone that measured 8 inches across, or about the size of a volleyball, that fell near Vivian, South Dakota.

"It's incredible," said Matthew Kumjian, associate professor in the Department of Meteorology and Atmosphere Science at Penn State. "This is the extreme upper end of what you'd expect from hail."

The scientists proposed hail larger than 6 inches should be classified as gargantuan, and said more awareness of these events, while rare, could help piece together a better understanding of the dangerous storms.

"Anything larger than about a quarter in size can start putting dents into your car," Kumjian said. "In some rare cases, 6-inch hail has actually gone through roofs and multiple floors in houses. We'd like to help mitigate the impacts on life and property, to help anticipate these kinds of events."

The storm in heavily populated Villa Carlos Paz, Argentina, offered scientists a rare opportunity to study a well-documented case of gargantuan hail. As the storm unfolded, residents took to social media, posting pictures and videos.

Hail typically occurs during severe storms, which produce strong, sustained updrafts. The winds hold hailstones aloft long enough to grow in sub-zero temperatures high in the atmosphere. But predicting hail size remains challenging, the scientists said.

Journal Reference:
Matthew R. Kumjian, Rachel Gutierrez, et al. "Gargantuan Hail in Argentina", Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Vol. 101, No. 4 (2020), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-19-0012.1

See the PDF of the report for the full analysis. Scroll down to the end for pictures of the three largest gargantuan hail they included in their report. One of the hail stones weighed over a pound (~ 1/2 kilogram)!


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  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday May 02 2020, @07:53AM (2 children)

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Saturday May 02 2020, @07:53AM (#989376) Homepage
    I see khallow and I to be on the same side of the argument. I complained about the wording, and I see khallow repeatedly repeinforce my point.
    --
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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 02 2020, @10:10AM (1 child)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday May 02 2020, @10:10AM (#989393) Journal
    It also appears that there was some melting of the hail by the time pictures were taken (at which time accurate measurements could be made, since there is a ruler in the picture). So I can see the "likely measured" wording as meaning the researchers were of the opinion that their estimates of original hail size based on those measurements were more likely than not to be accurate.
    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday May 02 2020, @10:41AM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Saturday May 02 2020, @10:41AM (#989402) Homepage
      Thanks for that info - the paper was inaccessible to me. However, any discussion that is resolved by statements discussing what they probably meant does support my point that the press department of the university is doing a poor job at science communication. Probably their command of language was as stunted as their grasp of the science itself - who needs a synthetic conditional past tense anyway, nowadays, when we can approximate it with ambiguous word choice instead?
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves