VIOLENT Hailstorms Hit Northern Italy - Jul. 19 - 25, 2023

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"An outbreak of severe weather, including winds as strong as a major hurricane and hail the size of cantaloupes, plagued Europe over the weekend and into the start of the workweek. The storms came as a strong cold front blasted into a record-hot air mass, unleashing the atmosphere’s pent-up rage and causing locally significant damage.

The episode began Friday, when a tornado struck near Milan. Since then, the waves of storms have become increasingly intense and widespread and will push into Eastern Europe before making it into Russia late week.

It’s even possible that some of the hail collected in Italy may rival world records for size.

A few rotating supercell thunderstorms formed in northern Italy late last week. Tennis ball-size hail was reported near Milan, along with a tornado that could be seen in videos lifting debris. A few baseball-size chunks of ice pelted Padua, 15 miles west of Venice.

More storms hit over the weekend, reaching a crescendo Monday. Winds reportedly reached 135 mph in Neuchâtel in western Switzerland, causing damage.

Perhaps the most impressive feat, however, was the “gargantuan” hailstone recovered in Italy on Monday. (Yes, that’s an actual scientific term — any stone with a diameter exceeding six inches counts as gargantuan.) The stone, which fell in Brugnera, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, appeared almost as large as a household cleaner bottle. A rough analysis using “photogrammetry,” which estimates the size/speed/position of objects based on mathematical comparisons to other objects in an image, would suggest the stone had a diameter of 7.89 inches, or about 20 centimeters.

That would make it the biggest hailstone ever observed in Europe and would approach the record of 8.1 inches, which belonged to a nearly two-pound stone that fell on Vivian, S.D., on July 23, 2010."

[CANADIANBEAVER69]

1. violent is right

The way some of them explode on impact shows the force they are coming down with. Holy cow, I couldn't even imagine.