Question

how is snow different from Hail

Answer 1

when an afternoon thunderstorm on Sunday July 27, 2008 brought falls of wintry white stuff to northern parts of the city.

But was it snow?

Not according to the Bureau of Meteorology who said residents had instead experienced heavy soft hail.

So what's the difference?

"Snow is made up of one or more tiny ice crystals that come together to form the intricate and unique shapes of a snowflake," says ABC weather specialist and presenter Graham Creed, "Whereas, hail is a frozen raindrop and is generally a lot bigger than a pure crystal of ice."

Snow typically forms when water vapour is rapidly cooled and turned into ice without going through the liquid phase. Although snow can form in a thunderstorm it can also form in any rain-bearing cloud.

Depending on what classification system you use there are up to 80 different types of snow crystals. Which crystals form depend on the humidity, temperature and pressure conditions within the cloud.

Hail, on the other hand, can only form in thunderstorms or Cumulonimbus clouds.

Raindrops within these clouds are moved up and down on strong updraughts and downdraughts which push the droplets through extremely cold temperatures so that they become supercooled, says Creed.

When one of these drops freezes it becomes hail. As it passes up and down through different layers of the cloud this newly-formed hailstone will accumulate other water drops or hailstones and increase in size.

Eventually as the hailstone gets bigger or the updraught weakens, it will be too large for the cloud to keep suspended and will fall to the ground as hail. Depending on surface air temperatures, the hail may start to melt and soften and fall as 'soft hail'.

Answer 2

It is simple snow is thick . Hail is thin