The 'BIGGEST' Hailstone I have EVER SEEN..Unbelievable!

[jackovesk]

The BIGGEST HAILSTONE I have ever seen...Unbelievable!

Melon-sized hail fell before the Norman Oklahoma tornadoes hit...

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/net/20110526/capt.591127a868b1d59cbfc7ebabfa408821.jpeg?x=400&y=300&q=85&sig=648anFRp9N.YhSwSfHJj8g--

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slideshow/photo//ydownload/20110526/photos_net_web_wl/1306444734/

[Anno]

That looks like it was made in a balloon to me. It's exactly the same shape you'd expect and you can clearly see what looks like a "balloon nipple" at the end of the Hailstone. Surely if something that size hit the earth it'd at least have one impact surface and not a perfectly curved surface?

[Cjay]

WOW! Thanks jackovesk. Great picture. I hope no people were hit by those.

The biggest hailstone I have personally seen was slightly larger than a tennis ball. Several years ago, I saw a documentary about extreme weather which discussed a tornado that sucked most of the water out of a lake. They showed a watermelon sized hailstone, almost twice the size of the one in the picture above, that formed around a fish.

[jackovesk]

That looks like it was made in a balloon to me. It's exactly the same shape you'd expect and you can clearly see what looks like a "balloon nipple" at the end of the Hailstone. Surely if something that size hit the earth it'd at least have one impact surface and not a perfectly curved surface?

Fair Assumption Anno,

But please explain to me how you can fill a balloon full of water and place it in a fridge to obtain a shape like that?

Obviously the balloon would flatten out somewhat...

Maybe it was done some other way, Who Knows..?

The reason I posted it was because I originally found the photo on the Drudge Report website, which is generally a good source of truth. with the Heading "Melon-sized hail fell before OK tornadoes hit..."

See for yourself...

http://www.drudgereport.com/

[Fred Steeves]

It's always amusing to see who decides to wear the skeptic hat for any one new topic. We are an amusing bunch huh? Of course me included.

Cheers,
Fred

[ViralSpiral]

He he Fred, this is true!

I have no idea whether authentic or not however, if I look at the "wet spot" on the table.... could that not be the flat part you speak of Jacko, which we cant see? AND, surely the msm would be full of other reports?

/me thinks aloud

[Teakai]

Looks fake to me, too. The ones Dutchsinse filmed were that were the size of a softball were all ragged and icy - not smooth and uniform.

[astrid]

Besides all the above, one would think that something that big, would break on impact when it hit the ground from a fair height,

simple physics.

[Anchor]

I have seen a mere 2.5cm hailstone. I retreived it and I noticed it was built up in many concentric layers, onion style. I would imagine that a large one would be VERY strong. When that particular hailstorm came I was glad my car was under cover :)

[ghostrider]

picked up hail in my yard, here in tulsa and it was different sizes, but all mostly had a teardrop shape. we okies got hammered.

[yaksuit]

Besides all the above, one would think that something that big, would break on impact when it hit the ground from a fair height,

simple physics.

Exactly!!

It would not be difficult to suspend a water filled balloon in a freezer.
If the result was excessively oblong then it could be sculpted and smoothed, which would explain the texture of the pictured hail.

If it is genuine it seems a bit unusual.

Last year where I live in Perth there was a significant hail storm producing golf/tennis ball size hail.
Thankfully not many injuries.
Many cars took a bit of a whopping.

[Anno]

At first I thought you could hang it but as mentioned, the balloon would stretch and give you an oblong shape. Plus, my freezer is too small to even do that in. And shaping one smooth? Sounds like a lot of effort. Not just the shaping, but preventing melting while you do it and hold it.

I've figured out a much easier way to do it. Did any of you use a balloon and paper mache to make a face mask when you were a kid? Do that with a water filled balloon and when the papier mache shell sets hard, you can freeze it simply laying on its side, upside down or whatever and the shell of paper mache will hold the form as the ice freezes. If you were really smart, you'd probably use a latex based glue to allow for stretching caused by the ice expanding.

I'm willing to put money on the fact that if any of you go make one that size and drop it from even 6ft, you'll not have a perfectly smooth surface. At best you'd have a flattened/crushed impact surface and fractures leading away from it in the opposite direction of travel.

Addition:
I just thought. If you do the paper mache, you're still going to have stretching and distortion as the water is denser than air and would move. I think you would have to do it in two halves. Suspend it, do the bottom half, let that set, then rest it on the bottom half and do the top. Remembering that it would be pliable so the top layers of paper mache (or even masking tape) could be used to create the final shape.

But, doing it in two halves would most likely cause a line in the 'hailstone' once it froze.

If you look at the photo at the top of this thread of the 'hailstone', you can see an equatorial mark going around the center of the 'hailstone'.

[yaksuit]

At first I thought you could hang it but as mentioned, the balloon would stretch and give you an oblong shape. Plus, my freezer is too small to even do that in. And shaping one smooth? Sounds like a lot of effort. Not just the shaping, but preventing melting while you do it and hold it.

I've figured out a much easier way to do it. Did any of you use a balloon and paper mache to make a face mask when you were a kid? Do that with a water filled balloon and when the papier mache shell sets hard, you can freeze it simply laying on its side, upside down or whatever and the shell of paper mache will hold the form as the ice freezes. If you were really smart, you'd probably use a latex based glue to allow for stretching caused by the ice expanding.

I'm willing to put money on the fact that if any of you go make one that size and drop it from even 6ft, you'll not have a perfectly smooth surface. At best you'd have a flattened/crushed impact surface and fractures leading away from it in the opposite direction of travel.

Good point.
I did consider a shell/soild membrane.

The person pictured could have access to a larger freezer say at work.
Larger freezers are not that uncommon in the burbs either :P

Cheers.
yak

[Cjay]

Besides all the above, one would think that something that big, would break on impact when it hit the ground from a fair height,

simple physics.

Physics is rarely that simple. It depends on the structure and density of the hailstone and what the hailstone landed on that might absorb the energy of its impact. For example, a puddle, mud or shrubs.

I once fell from the sky - actually from the top of a 60 foot pine tree, Sylvester Stallone (Cliffhanger) style. I should have broken on impact but I didn't. I think I hit every branch on the way down and when I landed on the ground, flat on my back, my friends laughed and said "that was cool - do it again". Grrrr. Nothing broken, just a few scratches and bruises. I was back on my feet within seconds.

I think it is possible for a hailstone to be that big and it is possible for it to survive the impact - BUT - after further consideration I don't believe that melon-sized hailstone is real because it is far too uniform in shape and texture. Also, look at the wet patch on the table. I am guessing that the ice ball has a flat side. Nice try guys.

Anno, I think you were right that it was made by freezing a balloon filled with water.

In the video below, you can see some REAL hailstones about tennis ball size, just like the ones I saw when I drove, very slowly, through a hailstorm lasting 45 minutes. They are all lumpy. They consist of many smaller hailstones that have impacted eachother, partially melted and refrozen before falling to the ground. You might reasonably ask why I continued driving for 45 minutes during a storm with mostly golf-ball and bigger sized hail. I was in the middle of nowhere. My kids and girlfriend were all screaming hysterically because the hail was extremely loud as it pounded the car and they thought we were going to die. They nagged me to find a tree to shelter under. We eventually came across a tree in the mainly grassy plains and as I headed towards the tree, the tree blew down. Bad idea. We only stopped long enough for my son to open his door and pick up a hailstone like the ones below. Then we kept driving.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZr8jXo1Uso

By the way, I forgot to say in my previous post that in the same documentary with the watermelon sized hailstone containing a fish, they talked about a cow that was sucked up very high by a tornado and was later found on the ground (dead, of course), coated with ice. Could that be called the world's largest hailstone?

If that seems far-fetched, I watched another documentary a few years ago (yes, I am a "doco" junky) that told, in great detail, one of the most amazing survival stories I have ever heard. There was an international paragliding competition in the New England region of northern New South Wales, Australia. Two of the pilots were sucked up extremely high (75,000 feet?) by a powerful thunderstorm - so high that both pilots were rendered unconscious from lack of oxygen and they were both coated with ice, along with their paragliders. The male pilot was dead when he hit the ground - from memory it was about 15 minutes after being sucked into the storm. The female pilot's paraglider partially collapsed from the weight of the ice and she fell tens of thousands of feet - to a low enough altitude for her to breathe enough oxygen to regain consciousness. Miraculously, she managed to recover from very rapid spins to half-control her paraglider and she landed alive - about 45 minutes after being sucked up into the storm. The whole time she was missing, her ground crew were chasing the storm in vehicles. She had some frostbite but she lived to tell what she could remember of her incredible story. Her GPS/altimeter recorded horizontal motion as well as all of her ups and downs within the storm.