First Flakes Of The Season

I pulled into my garage last night around 10:30 and said was that a snow flurry?

And sure enough, by 10:35 or so, it was lightly snowing.

I went to bed around 1 am and had a dusting on the ground, but it was gone by 8 am when I got up.

Talk about exciting!!! Bring on the winter season, homemade stew and chili!!!

Severe weather broke out as expected across extreme eastern Colorado, SW Kansas and the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma on Tuesday.

Large hail fell around Garden City, KS and strong winds were reported in Buffalo, OK.

Today, some severe weather is still possible around the Ark-la-tex.

Speaking of hail, it is a form of precipitation that is probably the least documented but one we want to know the most about.

Hail forms when supercooled water droplets (that means the drop of water is below freezing but doesn't turn into a solid) freezes when contacting condensation nuclei.

A condensation nuclei is something like a dust particle.

Once this happens the updraft from the storm carries the newly formed hail stone up and down in the cloud.

With each cycle of going up and down, more supercooled water droplets freeze instantly on contact with the former condensation nuclei (now hailstone) and it grows.

The longer this process repeats the bigger the hail will get.

Once the weight of the hailstone overcomes the strength of the updraft, it falls to the earth.

If you cut a hailstone in half, you can actually see the layers of growth it went through in the cloud.