I live in a city that has never had snowfall but we do witness atleast one hailstorm every winter. Just 100 kilometres north of my city is where it generally snows in winters. Could someone explain me why this happens?
I am assuming that it is the water vapour that condenses to become rain and if the temperature goes below a certain degree, it freezes to become snow/hailstone. Please explain further.
In: Planetary Science
Some places get sufficient upward wind so that the ice crystals repeatedly go through cycles of falling, freezing, rising, falling freezing larger, rising until they’re too large to rise up and fall to the ground. Sometimes (honestly most of the time) the hail actually grows as it’s moving laterally not vertically but just the same it falls when it’s too large and heavy for the wind to continue to carry it.
in the simplest way, what falls depends on how long it stays up in the sky, if pressure waves from below keep pushing it up, usually water turns into snow, but if the wind is still too strong for the flakes to fall, they will freeze and turn into hail. Even hard winds pushing it sideways can get it to stay up longer.
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