Freak hailstorm hits Yunnan, China on March 19, 2019
Residents of Jinping in southern China's Yunnan Province woke up to find their cars destroyed, windows smashed and streets covered by massive lumps of ice.
Huge hailstones hammered the county, which borders Vietnam, for about 20 minutes early in the morning, leaving the local traffic in chaos. No casualties have been reported.
Pictures circulating on Chinese social media show the locals holding sizable hailstones in their hands or collecting them in washing bowls.
Roofs, vehicles and crops in the fields were seen sustaining serious damage.
Some hailstones were as big as eggs and others were similar to the size of chestnuts, according to Yunnan Radio and Television Station, citing local weather authorities.
Other news sources described the size of the hailstones to be that of table tennis balls.
The biggest stones had a diameter of more than five centimetres (1.96 inches). Most of them measured 0.5 to five centimetres (0.19 to 1.96 inches) wide, said the report.
The storm began at around 6:40am and was accompanied by high winds gusting up to 70 kilometres per hour (43.6 miles per hour), said the Yunnan Meteorological Bureau which added that such storm 'was rarely seen in many years'.
Streets were covered with hailstones by a maximum depth of 28 centimetres (11 inches), said the Bureau.
The local authorities are currently calculating the economic loss caused by the adverse weather, it is reported.
They have warned the residents to stay warm and take extra care in the next few days.
Comment: "This is the strongest hail in nearly 30 years, it is very rare," said Cheng Lin, deputy head of the meteorological bureau of Jinping.
Some other intense hail storms from around the world recently include:
- India's capital Delhi enjoys unusual hail storm
- Rome turns to ICE: Italian capital comes to a standstill after it was battered by torrential rain and giant hailstones
- Hail storm kills 400 kangaroos and 150 goats in New South Wales, Australia
- Freak 'hailnado' blankets southern Queensland with tennis-ball-sized hail
- Violent hail storm and ice accumulation hits Liguria, Italy
- Walnut-sized hail and flash floods hit Turkey's northern provinces
- Severe hailstorm cripples traffic, paralyzes public transport in Mexico - 2 feet deep hail cover
- 'Felt like gunshots hitting the windows': Residents of Greensburg, Indiana look back at weekend damage caused by baseball-size hail
- Massive hail injures multiple people, kills zoo animals and damages 400 vehicles in Colorado Springs
- Foot of hail on Highway 22 near Longview, Alberta makes it look like December instead of July
Such devastating hail across the planet is being under reported in the media.New research shows that Earth's upper atmosphere is cooling as the sun is entering one of the deepest Solar Minima of the Space Age. Martin Mlynczak of NASA's Langley Research Center says, It is likely that atmospheric dust loading from increased comet and volcanic activity is also contributing to these 'intense' or 'freak' hailstorms, the cooling effect of which causes ice crystals to form.