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Sunday 17 May 2015

Hailstone

In 1942 a British forest guard in India made an alarming discovery, he stumbled across a frozen lake surrounded by hundreds of human skeletons.On studying the skeletons, scientists reached an unexpected conclusion - The hundreds of people all died from a sudden and severe hailstorm in 850 AD.

On so-called “Black Monday” April 13, 1360, a freak hail storm killed an estimated 1,000 English soldiers who were camped outside Chartres, France during the Hundred Years War. The storm was so devastating that it caused more English casualties than any of the previous battles of the war.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, a number of insurance companies specialized in hailstorm damage.

On April 30, 1888, a severe hailstorm struck the Indian town of Moradabad. The hailstones were reportedly the size of oranges, and they caused widespread damage. The hailstorm killed an estimated 200 people and injured hundreds more. It also destroyed crops and livestock, and it left many people homeless.

The heaviest hailstones ever recorded (1 kilogram (2.2 lb)) fell on the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh on April 14, 1986, killing 92. The hailstorm was caused by a combination of factors, including a strong cold front and a moist atmosphere. The cold front brought in cold air from the north, while the moist atmosphere provided the moisture for the hailstones to form. The hailstones were able to grow so large because they were able to stay suspended in the atmosphere for a long period of time.

A storm dropped an estimated 500,000 tonnes of hailstones in Sydney on April 14, 1999 and along the east coast of New South Wales. It caused about A$2.3 billion in damages, at the time the costliest natural disaster in Australian insurance history.

The largest hailstone ever recorded in the US fell in South Dakota in 2010. It measured eight inches across and weighed nearly two pounds.


Canadian insurance companies run a cloud seeding program to prevent the formation of large hailstones and reduce the amount of insurance claims for hail damage.

The town of Kericho in Kenya has more frequent hail than anywhere else on this planet, falling on an average of 132 days a year.

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