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Freak flooding in Guadalajara after a massive hail storm. Pictures on BBC:
Six suburbs in the Mexican city of Guadalajara were carpeted in a thick layer of ice after a heavy hailstorm. The ice was up to 1.5m (5ft) thick in places, half-burying vehicles.
[...] Hailstorms form when warm, moist air from the surface rises upwards forming showers and storms. Temperatures higher up, even in summer, can get well below 0C and so ice crystals form along with something called "supercooled water" which then grows into pellets of ice.
In severe thunderstorms, air can rise rapidly and is able to hold up these hailstones and allow them to expand in size. Eventually they get too heavy and fall to the ground.
In warmer parts of the year, such as in Guadalajara which has maximum temperatures of around 31-32C [(87-90 °F)] in June, more moisture is available, contributing to the formation of hailstorms.
Temperatures this month have been higher than normal with Torreon, to the north of Guadalajara, reaching highs of 37C [(99 °F)].
Hm, I wonder if somebody is going to mention anthropogenic warming with this?
(Score: 1, Disagree) by The Shire on Monday July 01 2019, @11:57PM (7 children)
If you look at the aerial photos it's clear that an ice flow was responsible for the ice in the streets. There is clearly no ice on any of the roofs nor on the cars and in one photo you can see the heavy ice only exists down the main town roads and only a few dozen feet down along the side streets, just what you would expect from an ice flow and NOT from hail.
I suspect we're looking at some climate change zealots latching on to an upper elevation ice dam break and trying to spin it as "wild weather".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 02 2019, @12:30AM (2 children)
I'm having trouble imagining an ice-damn that's not a pointless wall on the front edge of a glacier ... I don't see one busting and the ice going anywhere.
Luckily TFA had this to say:
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Tuesday July 02 2019, @12:49AM
That'd make it the ice version of a snow drift.
(Score: 2) by The Shire on Tuesday July 02 2019, @06:06AM
Just take a look at this aerial photo: https://i.imgur.com/pj2cUC6.jpg [imgur.com]
You can't tell me that five feet of ice melted off all the roofs and the tops of all the vehicles but NOT from the road. And falling hail does not push cars around - that's the action of flowing mass of ice. It may well be the accumulated hail that fell across the mountainside and was funneled into a river that in turn flooded the town sort of like a lahar, but that's still nothing like the report they're pushing of "Five Feet of Hail falling out of the sky".
(Score: 1) by helel on Tuesday July 02 2019, @12:51AM (3 children)
So the cars are free of ice, as one would expect if hail was some kind of low friction roughly orb shaped object that obeyed the law of gravity. Meanwhile if you looked at the photos before posting here you'd see there's clearly ice on rooftops.
(Score: 2) by The Shire on Tuesday July 02 2019, @06:01AM (2 children)
There is no appreciable ice on the roofs. And falling hail doesn't push cars around. There is exactly NO CHANCE that this was a case of 5 feet of hail falling out of the sky. They may have gotten hail, which in a mountainous area is no different than the hail Denver got just a few days ago, it happens in the mountains - totally normal. No, in this case it seems pretty likely we are looking at an ice dam that broke and cause a lahar, only with ice instead of mud.
You can see it clearly in this aerial photo: https://i.imgur.com/pj2cUC6.jpg [imgur.com]
The ice swept down the main street and flowed out a short ways along the side streets. It didn't fall from the sky in anywhere near the amounts the reports are trying to say. This is journalism for ad clicks rather than honest journalism.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by jmc23 on Wednesday July 03 2019, @10:29AM (1 child)
Because Guadalajara, and Mexico in general, is known for it's Ice dams?
What are small towns in mexico known for though? Oh right, a single main road descending from the mountains.
Got to love westerners talking about things they have no clue about.
(Score: 2) by The Shire on Wednesday July 03 2019, @10:27PM
Did you bother looking at the aerial photo? https://i.imgur.com/pj2cUC6.jpg [imgur.com]
Guadalajara is up at 1 mile elevation and has a mountainous park adjacent to it - it's not difficult to see a storm system come in and dump hail and rain over a wide area of that mountainous area that then flooded in a few hundred feet into the outskirts of the town. This is no different than the hail Denver saw just a couple weeks ago - 80 degrees then rain and hail. All it takes is poor drainage (like you would expect in a place like that) to funnel that precip from a wide area into a side road and then some local official grandstanding to the media about how his town was devastated.
It should be clear to anyone with eyes that the ice flowed in down that road. It's also clear there's only about a 100 foot stretch of road affected. I can tell you that if anything close to 5' of hail fell on that town there would have been massive destruction, collapsed roofs, broken windows, and ice everywhere, not just on the main road. And falling hail does not push around cars like you see in that image, flowing water/ice does that.
So, ya know, stick to the evidence. I'm far more likely to believe this was a flood of ice and water from a storm further up in the mountains (ya know, up where it's still very cold in the summer), than believe a freak storm was capable of dumping five FEET of hail on a town in a pattern that just happens to match what a flood would look like.
This is climate change fear mongerer click bait, nothing less, nothing more.