[FRIAM] This morning's hailstorm

[Nicholas Thompson]

*To Non-Santefeans:  the occasion for this correspondence is the fact that
it has rained, thundered, and hailed pretty steadily here for the last two
days, a lot of it at night.  Total rain not that great (over an inch) but
the steadiness and the duration has be remarkable for this desert town. *

Hi Steve,  Certainly diurnal heating is the most common way to kick of
mountain thunderstorms with hail.  The only thing I can imagine is that the
air is very unstable and there is enough lift provided by the mountains to
capitalize on this instability. The radar shows a series of showers riding
up slope from ABQ to SAF.   Also, as you will see from the chart below
which was made at just the time that another big hailstorm was pelting
Trader Joes, there is a long skinny CAPE and all of it is above the
freezing level.  So there is several thousand feet for hail to form in. All
that airmass is moving rapidly to the NE, providing a lot of sheer with the
lower levels.

[image: image.png]
the regional map for the same time shows a wea[image: image.png]
k front directly above us and with strong SSW winds aloft, this may be
contributing to the lift. over the big bend region a low pressure areaa
continues to develop and is packing the dryline quite nicely there.  Severe
weather has broken out in southern TX on the east side of the dry line.

The next chart
(https://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/mesoanalysis/new/viewsector.php?sector=12#)
shows the jetstream circulation.  the cluster of red lines in west TX and
east NM shows the amount of lift being provided by motions of the Jet
Stream,

Thus I am guessing that diurnal heating has very little to do with what;s
going on.

nick

On Mon, May 5, 2025 at 8:27 PM steve smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:

>
> On 5/5/25 1:32 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> > so, as the Chief Weather Nerd on the list,  I thought I ought to be
> > able to say something about this morning's hail storm.  I can't really.
>
>
> I live north of Santa Fe, at the point were the Rio Grande cuts through
> the lava fields from the Jemez thus also becoming a bit of a wind-funnel
> and a locally low-altitude (5400ft just miles from the 6500-7500 foot
> mesas of White Rock and Los Alamos) cold-air drainage.
>
> We had heavy hail at 1AM.... I don't know that I've ever experienced
> much hail at all outside the daylight hours, I always told myself the
> story that the conditions that lead to hail required ground-temperature
> based thermals?
>
> inquiring minds want to know.
>
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-- 
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
nthompson at clarku.edu
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson
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