ORLANDO, Fla. – It’s been a week of severe weather in Central Florida, with hail storms pounding the region.
Lake County got the worst of it on Tuesday, while Brevard and Marion counties took direct hits on Wednesday.
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The best chance to see hail in Florida is from March to July with the peak occurring in May. If you notice, these hail events tend to happen in late winter or spring, when it is typically cooler above the surface.
So how does hail form?
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Thunderstorms are made up of updrafts and downdrafts. The updraft is the rising air within the thunderstorm and the downdraft is the downward moving air, eventually producing the gusty winds we feel on the ground.
Hail forms in thunderstorms with intense updrafts. The updraft forces rain high into the thunderstorm where the air is below-freezing. The rain drops and freezes, becoming ice.
If the updraft is strong enough, the newly formed hailstone cycles through the storm and grows. The hailstone forms layers by colliding with water and supercooled water, which remains in the liquid state even though temperatures are below freezing.
Once the hailstone becomes too heavy to be supported by the thunderstorm updraft, it falls to the ground. The more intense the thunderstorm updraft, the larger the hail typically is. Oftentimes, hail can look like onions with multiple layers. This is more evident if you cut the stone in half.
When looking at the clear sections, the air was below-freezing, but not extremely cold. The water spreads out over the stone and slowly freezes. Air bubbles are allowed to escape making the ice clear.
When the ice is cloudy, the air temperature where the ice formed is well below freezing, oftentimes locking in air bubbles because the water froze so fast. This leaves the ice more cloudy.
If you count the number of cloudy and clear rings or layers, you can estimate how many trips the stone made within the thunderstorm.
The record size of a hailstone in the Sunshine State stands at 4.5 inches. Grapefruit-sized hail has been observed on three occasions in Florida: March 1996 in Polk County, March 2003 in Bradford County and May 2007 in Marion County.
Most recently, our largest hail report came from Sanford in May 2020, when a strong storm pelted Seminole County with 3-inch, or teacup-sized, hailstones. According the weather service, this report tied the record for the largest hailstone in east Central Florida.