"Tudor Hughes" wrote in message
...
On Oct 30, 6:04 pm, " wrote:
On Oct 30, 5:57 pm, Bonos Ego wrote:

What a day!

For those of us in the SW, the pictures on Spotlight are going to be
interesting!

For those not living in the South West, but have SKY TV, and would
like to watch spotlight, try Sky TV Channel 987.

There's some video footage here
toohttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/7700167.stm

From those incredible pictures people could be forgiven for
calling it snow because that's what it looks like. The hail must have
been very small but there's a huge volume of it which makes one think
it must be of low density. But hail is clear ice so that cannot be
the case. Does anyone have any explanation of these characteristics?
The storm cannot have had a supercell structure or the hail would
probably have gone up and down a few times before finally falling out
as large hail.

Tudor Hughes, Warlingham, Surrey.

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Tudor, I think a lot of it was soft hail or graupel which blows around
easily in the wind and drifts. Also mixed in were small hail (looking at the
picture showing footprints). Possibly also a bit of wet snow too as the
wet-bulb freezing level lowered in the very heavy precipitation. Actually I
don't think it looks like snow at all, sure it is white but it is laying
"funny", doesn't have that light puffy look to it. But yes to the layman and
to people who are not used to seeing much snow I can see why they might
think it was snow.

Will
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