Hail As Big As ... As Big As Garlic Cloves, I Suppose

     I was in the kitchen mixing up a batch of London broil marinade when the sky opened up.  Thunder storms in these parts don't usually include hail, and when they do, the hail is little, like Le Sueur baby peas.  The stuff that fell today was as big as the garlic cloves I planned to crush for the marinade.  The wind took some branches down, and the hail made a racket when it hit the roof.  We have a mess to clean up, but no real damage.
     So, how big was the biggest hailstone in the world?  The heaviest fell in Bangladesh on April 14, 1986 - 2.25 pounds.  The largest diameter, 7.9 inches, belongs to a hailstone that fell in Vivian, South Dakota on July 23, 2010.  An ice ball dropped in Aurora, Nebraska on June 22, 2003 that had the largest circumference - 18.74 inches.  Hail falls along the path of a thunder storm, and accumulations can be 18 inches deep.  On July 29, 2010, a thunderstorm maintained a stationary position in Denver, Colorado and dropped 4 feet of hail on one city block.  The biggest hailstones in our area were as big as tennis balls (2.5 inches in diameter).  They fell on May 29, 1995.
     Besides damaging buildings, cars, and (worst of all) crops, hail can be deadly.  The worst case of deadly hail happened in Roopkund, India.  In 1942 a British forest ranger exploring a valley discovered a frozen lake that was completely full of skeletons.  Scientists studied the remains when the lake thawed the following summer.  Every person had been killed by multiple blows to the head and shoulders with  objects the size of tennis balls.  The remains dated to 850 A.D.  Evidently, this group of people got caught in the valley when a hail storm moved through. Later water filled the valley floor, hiding the victims until the forest ranger happened upon them.  A folk song from the area describes how a goddess saw a group of people defiling the landscape, so she killed them by pelting them with ice stones.  Boy, that's an example of a legend being based in fact.
   

A View from the Kitchen Window

The hail really shows up against the black mulch.

These are a bit melted.  I had to wait until things quieted down before I could grab these samples.

Yep, as big as garlic cloves!