How does hail form?

Answer 1

Rain freezes as it falls. Before it hits the ground, it is swept back up into the rain cloud by an updraft, coated in moisture from the rain cloud, and falls again. The process repeats until the hailstone grows too heavy to be lifted back up into the cloud by the updraft. It then falls to the ground as a hailstone.

Answer 2

well hail usually always comes from a cumulonimbus cloud (thunder cloud) the cloud is broken up into three parts. the upper part of the cloud is frozen (also known as glaciated) the middle part is water and ice, and the bottom part is rain. When a thunderstorm forms there are strong updrafts which sends the rain and the ice colliding with eachother in the middle of the cloud, as the water hits the ice it grows larger forming hail. once the hail is large enough that the updrafts cant support it anymore it falls =)

so when theres hail the size of golf balls there are extremely strong updrafts going up into the cloud. yikes!

Answer 3

in short form, when a warm front and a cold front come together with enough humidity, raindrops form and start to fall, but if the wind is strong enough to start circulating, it sends the raindrops back up and they freeze into ice. they fall again and water attaches to them, then they rise again and freeze, forming layers of ice. the larger the hail, the stronger the wind, because it means the hailstone has been blown upward many times... once it's too heavy for the wind to push it up again, it falls down. the rotating winds causing hail is why hail often happens during the formation of a tornado. I know about this because I'm from Kansas, it's the sort of thing they teach in places where it happens often... also, when the sky turns green, run for cover.

Now I live in Argentina, in Buenos Aires, where a couple of weeks ago we had a huge hailstorm with palm-sized stones. This sort of thing has never happened here before, and shows that the climate is changing for the worse... in a few years we'll start seeing tornados in Buenos Aires, and with the density of the population here it could be a real problem.

Answer 4

Water droplet gets caught in an updraft and gets high enough that the water freezes. Falls and collects more water, gets caught in the updraft again. Repeat to add layers and eventually the the Ice ball is to heavy and falls the ground as hail.

Answer 5

It usually hails in very hot weather and thunderstorms because the rain rises upward, into areas of lower temperature, freezes, and then falls to earth in the form of little ice balls.

The source below explains in more detail:

Answer 6

In a thunderhead [tall cloud with heights of up to 50,000-70,000 feet] there are updrafts capable of lifting a falling object back up into the upper regions of the cloud.

A drop of water freezes. It gets blown back up higher into the cloud, then it falls again accumulating another layer of water/ice.

The updraft carries the very tiny ice drop back up into the cloud repeating the process many times, each time adding another layer of water/ice.

When the weight of the piece of ice is too heavy for the updraft to carry it back up into the cloud, the ice falls to the ground - as hail.

Hail is spherical because rain is spherical. Unlike drawings and paintings, a rain drop is almost perfectly spherical. When it freezes, it freezes as a sphere. Each layer of ice increases the diameter of the sphere.

Answer 7

updrafts of wind in cumulonimbus clouds causes raindrops to be freezed as it goes up and down ridin on the updrafts, when too heavy, it falls

Answer 8

magic