It's AumSum Time.
What is hail?
A burger rain.
No.
Hail is a type of rain in which balls of ice called hailstones fall from sky.
But, for the hail formation, following conditions are necessary.
Firstly, there must be a thunderstorm cloud.
Secondly, the upper portion of the cloud should be below freezing temperature.
Thirdly, the cloud should have a great vertical height.
Fourthly, it should have high water content.
Lastly, there must be strong uprising winds called updrafts.
Now, according to a recent study, hail begins to form.
When updrafts lift upwards, the water droplets present at the bottom of the cloud.
Now, as they ascend.
The freezing temperatures causes the droplets to turn into tiny hailstones.
Then, as the updrafts push these hailstones even higher.
More droplets freeze onto them, creating larger hailstones.
Eventually, when these hailstones become too heavy for the updrafts to hold.
They fall, causing hail.
How do snowflakes form?
My snowman makes them.
You wish.
A snowflake begins to form.
When a supercooled water droplet in the sky.
Freezes onto a dust particle or pollen forming a tiny ice crystal.
However, when water freezes.
Its molecules arrange themselves in a hexagonal pattern.
Thus giving the crystal a hexagonal shape.
Now, as the ice crystal keeps falling, it comes in contact with more water.
As a result, the water starts freezing on the six corners of the ice crystal.
Causing branches to grow on the corners and thus, giving us a beautiful snowflake.
Also, as the atmospheric conditions are the same on all sides of the snowflake.
The branches grow identically, thus making the snowflake symmetrical.
But since every snowflake follows a different path to the ground.
It encounters different atmospheric conditions.
Hence, it is said that no two snowflakes are the same.
They all tend to be unique.
Why is snow white?
Because it applies fairness cream.
No.
Sunlight or white light is a combination of all visible colors of light.
When light falls on an object.
It may absorb some colors of light and reflect the remaining colors.
The colors which are reflected by an object make up its color.
For example, when light falls on an apple.
It absorbs all other colors except red.
Apple reflects red color, making it appear red.
When light strikes coal.
It absorbs all colors and does not reflect any color.
Hence, coal appears black to us.
Really.
I didn't know that.
Now, snow does not absorb any colors of light and reflects all of them equally.
As the combination of all colors of light is white light, snow appears white to us.
How can some people predict rain?
By asking Thor, The Thunder God.
Naahhh.
There are 2 ways by which rain can be predicted.
First case occurs just before the beginning of heavy rainfall.
Here, lightning bolts split nitrogen and oxygen molecules, eventually producing ozone.
Now, strong blowing winds, carry ozone downward along with them.
Ozone is a sharp smelling gas.
When a person smells this ozone, it helps him predict the rain.
Now, the second case occurs when it is already raining somewhere nearby.
Usually, surfaces of soil and leaves have aromatic particles of dust and oil on them.
When raindrops hit these surfaces.
Tiny air bubbles containing these aromatic particles are created.
Just like fizz rushes upwards in a soda bottle, these air bubbles rush upwards and burst out.
Then, gusts of wind carry them ahead of the rain.
Helping us smell the aromatic particles and predict rain.