By: Jon Erdman
Published: August 31,2013
A view of the accumulated hail near Hay Springs, Neb. on Aug. 30, 2013. (Lisa Hughes via Facebook)
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The Weather Channel Facebook friend Lisa Hughes sent us some photos above that have the meteorologists here buzzing.
A late afternoon severe thunderstorm deposited up to eight inches of accumulated hail near the town of Hay Springs, Neb. on Aug. 30, 2013. According to the National Weather Service office in North Platte, Neb., golf-ball size hail (1.75 inches in diameter) lasted 15-20 minutes, and broke a car's windshield northwest of Hay Springs.
Which brings us to Lisa's photos.
The first photo in the slideshow above is a view of a hailstreak, or the footprint of hail on the ground, just north of Hay Springs. Hailstreaks are most spectacular when seen from above. Weather Underground's Christopher Burt has such an aerial photo of a Canadian hailstreak from July 2013 in an excellent blog post on record hailstorms and hailstones.
The second photo shows the wintry scene from hail accumulations up to eight inches deep, according to Hughes.
The third photo is a sunset view of hail fog. This occurs because the humid air near the ground is cooled quickly by the fresh hail cover. As the hail slowly melts and water evaporates, the air above is chilled further. If winds are light, a shallow, dense fog can form.
Straight-line wind gusts around 60 mph also snapped trees and damaged a gymnasium roof in Hay Springs. Those damage photos from Lisa Hughes are near the end of the slideshow above.
Accumulating hailstorms are much less rare than you may think, particularly in the High Plains and Rockies. A swath of the High Plains from southeast Wyoming and northeast Colorado to the Texas Panhandle is called "Hail Alley". On average, hail falls in these locations at least three days each year.
On July 3, 2013, over a foot of hail swamped the town of Santa Rosa, N.M.
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