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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 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.