What causes hail size of quarter or bigger size hail?
To understand how hail is formed, you must understand how a thunderstorm forms. First, there needs to be warm moist air at the surface and cold dry air aloft (high in the atmosphere). The warm air will rise and when the temperature reaches the dew point, it will condense into a liquid droplet. This process continues and a cumulonimbus cloud is formed. These clouds are also known as “thunderclouds” because they produce lightning, heavy rain, hail and sometimes tornadoes. Now, if there is enough wind shear (changing wind speeds and directions higher in the atmosphere), this thundercloud will begin to rotate. This is now called a “supercell thunderstorm”. Nearly all tornadoes and large hail come from supercells. Inside this supercell, an “updraft” of wind blows up and into the cloud from the ground, continually feeding the supercell with more warm-moist air. Updrafts in a supercell are tilted. Now, there is also a “downdraft” of wind blowing down from the top of the storm cloud towards th
