why is Hail formed even when its 80 outside during a Thunderstorm?
365865
Hail forms high in the atmosphere where temperatures are much lower that they are on the ground.
307948
Thunderstorms are often caused by the same conditions that tornadoes need to form. When there is a temperature inversion, where a mass of hot air is trapped under a mass of cold air, the hot air wants to rise and the cold air wants to sink. When something called a 'discontinuity' or 'catastrophe' occurs, the air masses begin to slip and spiral past one another, with the hot air rising and the cold air sinking. When the whirling air reaches the ground, it sucks up everything in its path.  Thunderstorms often happen when hot and old air masses collide. Friction between the moving air masses causes sparks of static electricity (lightning) and air currents in the clouds sometimes lift ice particles up and down over and over again so that they pick up more droplets of moisture which freeze on them and that is how hailstones grow. When the air masses collide, one can start to ride up over the other one, leading to the temperature inversion mentioned earlier.
1181166
Air is heated by the surface of the Earth on a Hot and sunny Day.  Hot air rises.  AS it rises it expands due to lowered atmospheric pressure.  As it expands it cools and begins to decend again.  Also if the air is moist as it cools it must release the moisture (rain -or hail if it is high and cold enough.)  This begins a circulation pattern up in the middle and down outside.  Often hail will begin to fall only to be caught in an updraft and carried aloft again.  This cycle continues until the hail is too heavy for the updrafts to lift it and it makes it to the ground.  This is why very strong thunderstoms with violent updrafts produce large hail.
476930
Everything has to be perfect for you to be struck, even if you are made of titanium.\n\n80% of lightning goes from cloud to cloud. The 20% that is between the ground and sky, 75% of it goes up, meaning the ground strikes the cloud. \n\nAnd to make it even tougher for a metal person to be struck, they have to be one of the highest points in an open field, rooftop, whatever. Which is why trees are more often struck than anything else, even if it is next to a house with a metal pole, or a car on the road....\n\nisn't that interesting?
666982
Actually a storm came through Fort Worth in about 1995, the sky was about as green as a lilly pad.  We didn't get the severe weather where I lived, but FW got grapefruit sized hail in the park that actually killed several people.  Now that I study and work in weather I know what causes the green discoloration when the light refracts off hailstone in the air it causes a light green light, with more widespread and intense hail you get the darker green
1158779
Storms are created when a center of low pressure develops, with a system of high pressure surrounding it. This combination of opposing forces can create winds and result in the formation of storm clouds, such as the cumulonimbus. Small, localized areas of low pressure can form from hot air rising off hot ground, resulting in smaller disturbances such as dust devils and whirlwinds.
1077150
Thunderstorms are an occurrence of high pressure and low pressure. When the two zone converge they create ionization of the atmosphere, that is an electrical charge one is positive and the other negative, with the ground being ground. As the two systems get closer to each other, the disruption in the atmosphere caused the discharge of positive electrons across the pressure zones creating a static discharge in the form of lightening, most of the time the lightening strikes from positive to negative between the clouds, however many times the discharge is so massive it goes to ground. Thunder is the sound the lightening makes as it breaks the sound barrier of approximately 720 mile per hour when flashing between positive and negative poles.
17071
It's called "thunder snow" & it's rare, since cold weather usually doesn't have the right conditions for cumulonimbus clouds to form. However if the conditions are right (warmer air & moisture) thunderstorms can form in the winter as well.\n\nIt's pretty wild, I've seen it a couple times in the northeast. It's especially amazing at night, the lightning creates a giant strobe effect.
344047
The cause of lightning is still somewhat mysterious.  The leading theories state that an interaction between updrafts, rain droplets, and ice crystals in a thunderstorm separates positive from negative charges, such that positive charges concentrate at the top of the cloud, and negative charges at the bottom.  This negative charge in the cloud base induces a positive charge in the ground; lightning is an attempt to equalize this charge.\n\nThunder is basically a kind of explosion of air; it's what happens when the air the lightning passes through is violently heated and expands.  The reason thunder takes several seconds is because we hear thunder produced all along the lightning channel, which may be some miles long.
329581
What you saw was a dustdevil, a cousin of the tornado.  In the desert, the land heats up very quickly in the summer time and a thermal forms. A thermal is a upward rising parcel of air, that can cause a swirl as it rises, and is also called an updraft, which also can occur in a supercell thunderstorm, which almost always produce tornadoes. The dustdevil can be as strong as a minimal tornado (F-0) at just around 70-75 mph, or a minimal hurricane. They are often short lived events and are usually only a 100 feet tall at most.
790168
Lightening (which causes the thunder) is caused by a static electrical charge build up inside very high clouds. The static build up is caused by the collision and rubbing of small ice particles way up in the clouds. If these particles get big enough they will fall down and depending on the temperature outside will either melt into rain, or could initiate crystal formation (snow).\n\nSo you see, there is nothing about whether its rain or snow that effects the mechanism of lightning generation. The reason that it is less common in the winter is that in order to produce the very high lightning generating clouds (anvil-topped cummilonimbus [sorry if spelt wrong!]) it requires very strong updrafts - This is more likely in the summer when the hot sun beating down heats air rapidly so it shoots up fast. But there are conditions in winter that can have the same effect (like collision between warm and cold fronts).
353812
The rain falls from lower altitudes where the ambient temperatures are warmer. The hail starts out as rain but high winds carry it upward to higher altitudes where it freezes due to lower temps. The hail stones fall and get wet as they pass through the warmer rain clouds, then they are swept up again to refreeze, thus growing larger in diameter. This process repeats until the hail stones get heavy enough that the upward winds cannot carry them up again. They fall to the ground. Large hail stones indicate high winds.
192084
Well...\n\nThe "sun is out" whenever there is a break in the clouds that can let the sunlight in.  You can still have clouds overhead providing precipitation.\n\nAlso, in rare cases, the clouds can drop precipitation and quickly leave while it is still falling to the earth, even though it is not hitting the ground yet.  Remember that precipitation takes a few minutes to travel from the clouds to the ground.\n\nPEACE IS COMMING SOON!
656135
When the atmospheric gasses interact their are collissions of gas and great "tornadoes' between the interacting substances.  this draws the moisture out of the air and the tornadoe funnels this moisture to the top of the tornadoe where it freezes and comes down as hail. i hope this answer makes sense i am a meteorologist and not used to wording these things in nongeek terms
890699
Im not really sure but once at night it started to hail...or was it snow?
199333
It's part of the design. Don't worry about hitting by lightning where there are storms. Because lightning hit the highest peak of the terrain.\nI'll give you an example to clarify it. If you're walking in the rice field with your umbrella, you are likely to be hit because you are the highest peak compare to your surrounding. But if you're walking in a forest, you are not likely to be hit because there are trees much higher/taller than you.
2460
Here's more than you probably ever wanted to know about sleet.\nDefinitions of sleet on the Web:\n\n    * precipitate as a mixture of rain and snow; "If the temperature rises above freezing, it will probably sleet"\n    * partially melted snow (or a mixture of rain and snow)\n      wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn\n\n    * Whereas hail forms within clouds, sleet begins as snow falling to earth after having left its originating cloud. The snow partially melts on its trip down in a layer of warm air but then refreezes into ice crystals that appear much like hail.\n      en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleet\n\n    * Depending on the region, precipitation of rain or snow mixed, or rain and hail, or rain and ice pellets, or melting snow, or sudden and brief rainfall with wind and hail.\n      www.palmbeachdailynews.com/weather/content/shared/weather/weather_glossary.html\n\n    * Rain that turns to ice pellets before reaching the ground. Sleet also causes roads to freeze and become slippery.\n      weathereye.kgan.com/cadet/disaster/glossary.html\n\n    * A type of frozen precipitation, consisting of small transparent pellets.\n      ggweather.com/glossary.htm\n\n    * Frozen or partly frozen rain.\n      www.telemet.com/weather_gloss_s.htm\n\n    * Precipitation consisting of transparent pellets of ice, 5 millimeters or less in diameter. Also called ice pellets. Forms when snow enters a warm layer of air above the surface and melts and then enters a deep layer of sub freezing air on the surface and refreezes.\n      www.weca.org/nws-terms.html\n\n    * Describes solid grains of ice formed by the freezing of raindrops or the refreezing of largely melted snowflakes. These grains usually bounce upon impact with the ground or pavement. Heavy sleet is a relatively rare event defined as an accumulation of ice pellets covering the ground to a depth of 1/2" or more. See Ice Pellets.\n      www.srh.weather.gov/srh/jetstream/append/glossary_s.htm\n\n    * also called ice pellets. Sleet is formed when raindrops or melted snowflakes freeze as they pass through a below-freezing layer of air near the earth's surface. Sleet does not normally stick to trees and wires, and usually bounces on hitting the ground. An accumulation of sleet often has the consistency of dry sand.\n      www.sws.uiuc.edu/atmos/statecli/Winter/glossary.htm\n\n    * Frozen or partially frozen rain that form when rain passes through a layer of air that is below the freezing temperature, falls to earth as a slush. Freshwater.\n      www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/antarctica_glossary_of_terms2.htm\n\n    * a form of precipitation in which droplets are partially frozen as water-ice (or water-snow) mixture.\n      www.naturalhazards.org/glossary/\n\n    * in the US, a term used to describe tiny ice pellets that are formed when rain or partially melted snowflakes refreeze before reaching the ground. Colloquial usage of the term coincides with British usage, which defines sleet as a mixture of rain and snow.\n      www.pnl.gov/atmos_sciences/Cdw/Glossary.html\n\n    * Frozen precipitation that results when rain drops freeze while falling, before hitting the ground. This occurs when rain falls through a layer of colder air underlying a layer of warmer air. See Temperature Inversion.\n      wilstar.com/skywatch_glossary.htm\n\n    * 1. See ice pellets. 2. In British terminology, and colloquially in some parts of the United States, precipitation in the form of a mixture of rain and snow.\n      amsglossary.allenpress.com/glossary/browse\n\n    * Sleet is frozen precipitation falling as ice pellets. Ice pellets occur when snowflakes melt into raindrops as they pass through a thin layer of warmer air. The raindrops then refreeze into particles of ice when they fall into a layer of sub-freezing air near the surface of the earth.\n      www.weather.com/encyclopedia/winter/precip.html\n\n    * precipitation which is a mixture of rain and ice.\n      www.tex