Sep 11, 2024
Many people might guess that the most damaging weather events in the US in 2024 were hurricanes, floods, or tornadoes. They’d be wrong, though. Nothing creates more costly damage than hailstorms. And thanks to climate change, they’re only going to get worse.
Thunderstorms have accounted for $61 billion in damage in the US so far this year. That's according to Steve Bowen. He's the chief science officer for a company that assesses insurance risks. Between $31 billion and $49 billion is caused by hail, Bowen told NBC News. By comparison, hurricanes, tropical storms, and flooding have caused $14 billion in damage combined.
The warmer Earth gets, the larger hailstones are likely to be. Most hailstones are tiny. They’re created when water droplets from storm clouds are juggled into colder air by updrafts. They gradually freeze together until they’re too heavy to stay in the air. Even tiny ones fall eventually. The warmer the air, the stronger the updraft, though. That can keep a hailstone bouncing around in the freezing air far longer. When that happens, the hail grows in size.
“Imagine taking a hair dryer and turning it on end and pointing it up at the sky and trying to balance a ping pong ball,” Victor Gensini told NBC. He's a professor of meteorology at the University of Illinois. “Now try to balance a baseball or a grapefruit. You’re gonna need a much stronger updraft to balance the downward force of that.”
Gensini found that as our world continues to warm, the frequency of hailstones 1.5 inches in diameter or larger will increase between 15% and 75%. He published those findings last month.
Reflect: What changes in weather patterns have you noticed or observed over your lifetime?
Photo of hail from Unsplash courtesy of David Trinks.
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