Hail Harvest

A line of severe thunderstorms that blew through the Cedar Rapids metro area just after 1:00 PM on Tuesday, September 21, 2010, produced these hailstones, collected by my daughter around 1:20 PM near Bowman Woods Park in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and saved in the freezer. The left image is not a single hailstone but a handful of several together, while the image at right shows their individual sizes and shapes in relation to a tape measure. The largest measures about 1 3/4 inches wide. Note the conglomerate look to them, as they were tossed around aloft in the storm cell several times before finally dropping to Earth. The hail fall cause little if any damage at this location.