Hail

06-06-23 00 / episode: 141

Script

"Hail and hailstones.

Well, of course, they're not.

Stones, hail is ice that falls from the sky.

It typically happens during a storm, especially a particularly strong and cold storm.

Have you ever been in a hail storm? They're at once exciting and scary and dangerous.

I remember as a boy growing up on the Prairies in Saskatchewan, in Canada, we had hailstorms about once a year.

The farmers hated it because it would damage the crops.

Most people hated it because it would damage their property, it would damage their cars or maybe even their houses.

Most of the hail was not particularly bad.

They were very, very small hailstones.

They came down and they were probably about half the size of my fingernail or smaller and they went pop puck, puck, puck, puck puck as they hit the roof of the car or the roof of your house.

It was kind of an interesting sound but it would pile up and it happened in the summertime at the end of the hailstorm, you'd get piles of ice on the ground and then the sun would come out and it would bake them away.

It was quite interesting, but one day I was walking to school and there was a hailstorm and the hailstones were big.

I remember I got hit by several and they really hurt.

One of them was half as big as a golf ball and, oh, my goodness, it hurts a lot.

Then there was another time, many, many years later I was climbing in the mountains.

There were about 12 of us walking across a glacier.

Now, a glacier, there's no protection.

It's open.

If, uh, something falls from the sky, you can't hide under a tree, there's no cliffs or overhangs to hide under no buildings.

It's just wide open.

And we ran when the hail started falling, it really hurt some of us.

Even when we got off the glacier, we took off our packs and we huddled underneath the pack and let the hailstones hit our pack because they really hurt your body when they hit.

It was quite amazing.

I hope you never have to experience a hailstorm."