Hail

It didn’t take long for this summer hailstorm to cover the ground.

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The hail pounding on the roof of our cabin last week sounded like a jet engine. The pea-sized pellets were slicing through the sky at an astonishing rate and so dense that sheets of hail were sliding off the roof in seconds. It only lasted for a few minutes and did no significant damage, but it was a good reminder that we are not in charge.

Hail is one of nature’s most fickle weather events. A hailstorm can happen almost anywhere almost any time, although hail season is generally considered to be between March and November. A hailstorm may have a path, called a swath, ranging from a few acres to ten miles wide and ten times that in length. Hail size can vary from the pea-sized hail we endured to hailstones weighing up to one kilogram or 2.25 pounds. The largest hailstone ever measured in the world fell on Vivian, South Dakota on June 23, 2010. This stone, when finally measured, was 8.5 inches long and weighed one ounce shy of two pounds. However, when it was first recovered, it measured 11 inches long, but lost size in the freezer of its collector during a prolonged power outage.

How hailstones form is interesting. A hailstone starts as a water droplet, called an embryo and typically around 0.02 mm in diameter, caught in updrafts of a thunderstorm. As the droplet rises into the extremely cold parts of the atmosphere, it freezes. This bit of ice collides with super-cooled water droplets adding to its mass as it continues to rise. If the freezing of additional moisture happens quickly, it traps air in the ice and appears cloudy, much like snow. If the freezing of added water occurs slowly, the ice will be clear as the air will be able to escape. Both kinds can be present in a single hailstone as conditions change within the updraft. At some point, this ice becomes heavier than the updraft can support and it begins to fall. “Supercell thunderstorms have sustained updrafts that support large hail formation by repeatedly lifting the hailstones into the very cold air at the top of the thunderstorm cloud where they can accumulate more layers of ice (NOAA).” 

Heavier hailstones tend to fall closer to the center of the storm as they are less affected by lateral winds. Stones up to an inch in diameter may fall at 9-25 miles per hour, hailstones up to two inches may hit 40 mph and stones up to four inches in diameter may reach 80 mph. Hailstones larger than four inches may exceed 100 mph. As a comparison, Cincinnati Reds pitcher, Aroldis Chapman, officially holds the Guinness World Record for fastest baseball pitch (2010) with a 105.8 mph fastball.

Hail can be nearly as destructive as a tornado and when all hail damage in the U.S. for a given year is combined, may exceed that of a serious hurricane. According to the Insurance Journal, “Hail of two inches or greater struck the United States on 141 days last year (2023)” and over 10 million homes were pelleted with hailstones of at least one inch in diameter. That year set a new record in the amount of damage hail caused. A five-day stretch of storms in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas area caused an estimated 7-10 billion dollars in insured damage with 95 percent caused by hail. Damage includes hailstones penetrating windshields like bullets, pock-marking cars with inch-deep dents, shattering house windows and siding, penetrating roofs, and annihilating crops.

Hail can be deadly too. On April 30, 1888, Moradabad, India suffered a hailstorm said to have killed as many as 246 people with hailstones as large as, “goose eggs and oranges”. People caught outdoors were simply bludgeoned to death by the hard hail. In 1986, Bangladesh was pounded by a storm that left 92 people dead from hailstones weighing as much as two pounds. In the United States, a Texas teenager was the most recent victim (2010), felled by a single baseball-sized hailstone that struck him in the head, killing him instantly. A 20-month-old little girl may be the latest victim worldwide (August 2022) when she was killed during a hailstorm in Spain. Sixty-seven other people were injured in that same event.

Hailstorms are one of the most difficult weather conditions to predict. They are short-lived, sudden, and localized. They are however, always connected to thunderstorms, so when you venture outside during a thunderstorm, not only keep your head on a swivel for lightning, but hail as well.

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Help Idaho Wildlife

When we traveled across the state in October 2017, most of the vehicles we saw using the wildlife management areas did not have wildlife plates. Buying wildlife plates is a great way for non-hunters and hunters alike to support wildlife-based recreation like birding.

C'mon folks, let's help Idaho's wildlife by proudly buying and displaying a wildlife license plate on each of our vehicles! 

See below for information on Idaho plates. Most states have wildlife plates so if you live outside Idaho, check with your state's wildlife department or vehicle licensing division for availability of state wildlife plates where you live. 

And tell them that you heard about it from Nature-track.com!

Wildlife License Plates

Great news! as of 2024, there are three NEW designs for license plates. They still are bluebird, cutthroat trout and elk, but they are beautiful.

Idaho Wildlife license plates provide essential funding that benefits the great diversity of native plants and wildlife that are not hunted, fished or trapped—over 10,000 species or 98% of Idaho’s species diversity. Game species that share the same habitats (such as elk, deer, antelope, sage-grouse, salmon, trout) also benefit from these specialty plates.

No state tax dollars are provided for wildlife diversity, conservation education and recreation programs. Neither are any revenues from the sale of hunting or fishing licenses spent on nongame species. Instead, these species depend on direct donations, federal grants, fundraising initiatives—and the Idaho Wildlife license plates.

Both my vehicles have Bluebird Plates. I prefer the bluebird because the nongame program gets 70 percent of the money from bluebird plates, but only 60 percent of the money from elk and trout plates - 10 percent of the money from elk plates supports wildlife disease monitoring and testing programs (to benefit the livestock industry) and 10 percent from cutthroat plates supports non-motorized boat access.

Incidentally, in 2014, the Idaho Legislature denied the Department of Fish and Game the ability to add new plates or even to change the name of the elk and cutthroat plates (very specific) to wildlife and fish plates, a move that would have allowed for changing images occasionally and generating more revenue. It would seem that they believe that we Idahoans don't want a well funded wildlife program.

I think it is time we let the Legislature know that Idahoan support wildlife funding and that we would like to see these generic plates come to fruition.