how is hail made?

Answer 1

All precipitation from the clouds start out as snow. During a massive thunderstorm this is what happens:
The snow starts falling and melts when it encounters warmer air, this makes rain. During a severe storm there is a massive updraft of air that pushes the water droplets back up where they freeze again, this time into ice particles. As the ice bits move out of the updraft they start to fall again and pick up more water from the air. Sometimes these wet ice bits get blown up again and again, each time picking up more water and freezing into larger and larger chunks of ice. In a super bad storm this happens many, many times and the ice gets quite large. This is hail. Eventually the hail gets too big to be blown back up or it gets away from the updraft and falls to the ground. Hail sizes range from small pea size to bigger than grapefruits. Really large hail might have a tornado along with it for that added punch.

Answer 2

Hail is made when the rain clouds are above a band of cold air. As the rain falls through the cold air it freezes into hail. Then if those clouds are low enough the hail does not have time to melt back into water before it reaches the ground.

Answer 3

(L) I hate to burst your bubble, but the process by which snow forms is decidedly different than how hail forms. Snow forms by water droplets freezing and crystalizing into hexagonal or linear forms and, although buffeted about, remain frozen. Sleet is what occurs when the snow crystals melt or partially melt before hitting the ground. On an extremely cold day, you can actually create snow. If the temperature is about 20 below 0 (F), if you take a pan of water and throw the water into the air, the water will form ice crystals, or snow before it hits the ground. I have seen this done, and I have done this myself. Hail forms when water droplets freeze, and buffeted by the strong winds, remain aloft as they travel through zones where water droplets are still liquid. While traveling through these zones of liquid water droplets, the surface tension of the liquid water causes the water droplet to coat the surface of the ice particle. When the ice particle passes through a zone where water freezes, the accreted water droplet freezes and becomes part of ice particle. The ice particle will continue to grow until the force of the updrafts can no longer support it's weight. Then it falls to the ground as hail. In the south east quadrant of the continental US where the squall lines create particularly strong storms, the hail becomes quite large. Snow and hail are not the same thing. The only thing that they have in common is that they are both frozen water. The ice cubes in my freezer are also frozen water, but you could not call them snow or hail either. If you are going to make a point of something, at least try to make your physics correct.

Answer 4

Small droplets of moisture in the atmosphere rise on updrafts into the cooler parts of clouds and begin to lose their heat. When the pressure decreases at high altitudes, the droplets lose the warmest moisture to evaporation, making the droplets cool rapidly.

The droplets then freeze due to this evaporative cooling and become small bits of hail about a millimeter across. These tiny bits of ice then ride another updraft into the clouds and get another coating of moisture that freezes, and this cycle repeats as long as the conditions are right.

Once the particles of hail are too heavy to be supported by the updraft, they fall out and you get hail.

Answer 5

As cloud build upward they have moisture in them. When they reach a certain level they freeze thus making hail. This usually happens when the atmosphere is very unsteady. Ever see those BIG white puffy clouds that go way up? Those are the types of clouds.

Answer 6

Hail forms on condensation nuclei such as dust, bugs, or ice crystals, when supercooled water freezes on contact

Answer 7

Freezing and thawing of rain several times before it reaches the ground. With thaw, it collects more misture and then that freezes on top ot it. It is like the building of an icycle.