What causes hail to stay airborne even though it weighs more than air?
Hail and sleet are droplets of water that freeze as they fall towards the ground. Sleet occurs when the droplet freezes and falls to earth as an ice pellet. These are usually fairly uniform in size. Hail falls as an ice pellet as well, however the dynamics involved in hail are entirely different than sleet. While sleet occurs during winter precipitation events, hail occurs only during thunderstorm activity. Hail can range in size from tiny ice pellets to ice the size of a softball. The reason for this is because thunderstorms consist of updrafts of wind. Generally speaking, the stronger the storm, the greater the updrafts. A pellet of ice will begin to fall towards the ground, then be thrusted back upwards by updrafts. When this occurs, the ice pellet increases in size due to additional water droplets cohering to it, and freezing over. This pattern repeats itself until the weight of the hailstone becomes greater than the force of the updrafts. This is the reason why the largest of hail
