How Does Science Behind Hail Formation Work?

Hail forms when water freezes and goes on a wild rollercoaster ride in the sky.

Imagine you're playing with ice cubes in a blender. The blender is like a storm cloud, it’s full of moving air, and it’s really strong. When the blender turns on (the storm starts), big pieces of ice are shaken around inside it. Each time they go up, they meet more water, which freezes onto them, making them bigger.

Think of a hailstone like a snowball that keeps getting bigger as it rolls through the cloud. Every time it goes up, it gets covered in more ice, like when you add another layer of snow on top of your snowball. If the storm is really strong and the hailstone keeps going up and down many times, it can grow to be as big as a golf ball, or even bigger!

When the hailstone finally gets too heavy to stay in the cloud, it falls back down, just like when you drop your ice cube into your drink. That’s how we get hail on the ground!