Hailstones
“Have you entered the treasury of snow, or have you seen the treasury of hail?” [Job 38:22]
We’ve all enjoyed stepping outside after a hailstorm and scooping up a handful of the cold pellets on a summer day, but hail can be deadly. Most of the time hail stays small and is harmless. Sometimes conditions can produce large stones that can destroy crops, strip trees of foliage, damage roofs, and break car windows. As a pilot, I’m also aware of how quickly hail can damage an airplane! In the spring of 1986, hail the size of grapefruit fell in Bangladesh, killing over 90 people.
Hail is formed in thunderhead clouds when warm summer air from the ground rises and cools. As the temperature of this air drops and loses its ability to hold moisture, it releases it and forms puffy-looking clouds. The interaction of rising air creates updrafts with vertical wind speeds of over 110 mph. Hail grows in the storm cloud’s main updraft, where most of the cloud is, in the form of “super-cooled” water molecules which then attach themselves to particles and freeze. Often a hailstone will connect with other stones until the weight of the hail overcomes the updraft wind and it falls from the sky.
The size of hail is best measured with a ruler for accuracy. But most of us don’t carry rulers around when we encounter hail. So, common household objects or coins are used to quickly determine size – such as a dime, penny, nickel, or pea, grape, golf ball, or cantaloupe. The most common area for hail in the United States is in an area where Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming meet. It’s known as “Hail Alley.” The city that gets the most hail in the U.S. is Cheyenne, Wyoming. It averages nine to 10 hailstorms every year! The largest hailstone on record in the U.S. fell on July 23, 2010, in Vivian, South Dakota. This whopper stone had an eight-inch diameter and weighed 1.93 pounds. I don’t think an umbrella would protect you from this storm!
The Bible actually predicts the mother of all hailstorms as happening in the future when the seven last plagues fall on the Earth. The Bible explains the seventh plague: “And great hail from heaven fell upon men, each hailstone about the weight of a talent” (Revelation 16:21). A talent weighs about 75 pounds. Only those under the care of God’s mighty hand will be protected from these disasters. Are you living under the Lord’s shelter every day?
