Holy hail! As you probably heard, parts of the province got walloped by hailstorms earlier this week. And recently, it was confirmed that Alberta also broke a nationwide record for hail size while it was happening. We guess it’s a silver lining? But we’d probably prefer no hail over record-breaking stuff.
Turns out, Ontario’s Western University kicked off the Northern Hail Project this year, which has the express intent to start recording hail storms across the country. And naturally the prairie provinces, Alberta included, are a gold mine for collecting specimens.
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The NHP is very excited to announce that their field team collected a new record large hailstone for Canada on 1 August, 2022! The stone fell near the hamlet of Markerville in Alberta. Press release here: https://t.co/JJ02NDWVc1 pic.twitter.com/AscXQhU2wK
— Northern Hail Project 🇨🇦 (@westernuNHP) August 3, 2022
Monday proved to be the proverbial mother lode for the team. Following a storm to Markerville (a hamlet close that’s part of Red Deer County), they discovered several examples of ‘baseball-sized’ hail. And, upon closer inspection, a record-breaking one!
Measuring 123 millimetres at its widest (just slightly more than a DVD) and weighing 292.71 grams, the piece of hail broke a nearly 50 year old nationwide record, which was recorded in Saskatchewan in 1973. It joins a very exclusive club of hailstones weighing over 290 grams- only 22 have ever been found in Canada!
The whole ‘record breaking hail size’ is a weird flex for Alberta, but we’ll take it.
