What the Hail is going on?

Last Sunday the kids and I were planting flowers when the sky just over the mountain in front of our house turned black. Even Joey and Claire were impressed and stopped to check it out.




The heavy rain remained to our east, but the outflow from the storm made it quite windy and Joey tried his best to fly away.





Here is the rotating storm from our house. The circular cloud to the left is the outflow boundary which is the rain-cooled downdraft rushing our ahead of the storm. The storm is moving from right to left. The column on the right side of the storm is hail.

This type of storm is quite rare for central Pennsylvania. If you would like to learn a little more about the weather-nerdy aspects of it, go to the link below.

http://nws.met.psu.edu/severe/2008/22Jun2008.pdf


Just a few days later, another severe weather event moved across the state. This rotating storm moved right over the weather office then up the valley toward Williamsport. If this was Kansas, the cloud nub hanging out of the storm to the right would have developed a tornado. But this isn't...so it didn't. At this point, the storm was just about over our house in Pleasant Gap, PA but no one but the dog was there to enjoy it.


The picture was taken by Paul Markowski, a research meteorologist from Penn State.