Hard You've Got Hail! Quiz / Test | Disasters

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. In an early entry to the deadly hail list, several hundred pilgrims died in a hailstorm in or around the 9th century CE. In which country did this happen?

Answer: India

Between 300 and 600 skeletons were found in Roopkund, in the Uttarkhand state of India, in 1942. Originally thought to have been victims of an epidemic, landslide or blizzard, and to date from the 12th to 15th centuries, they were eventually determined to have died of skull injuries cause by hailstones the size of cricket balls (which means about 3 inches or 7.5 cm in diameter) at some time around the 9th century CE.

2. The largest hailstone ever recorded in the United States landed in the town of Aurora, Nebraska. This hailstone would have been about the same size as what familiar object?

Answer: about the size of a honeydew melon

On June 22, 2003, the largest hailstone ever recorded in the United States fell in Aurora, Nebraska during a thunderstorm. It had a diameter of roughly 7 inches (17.75 cm) and a circumference of 18.75 inches (47.6 cm).

The size of hailstones is often described by comparison to familiar objects. Hailstones over 10cm (4.5 in) in diameter are so rare that the common descriptive scales just refer to them all as 'melon-sized' - there will be some melon to fit! A honeydew melon is typically 15-22 cm (6-9 in) in diameter along its longer axis. The smallest hailstones, under 1 cm in size, are compared to peas; stones between 6 and 7.5 cm in diameter are said to be the size of a tennis ball; stones between 7.5 and 9 cm are described as being the size of an orange.

3. On July 8, 1853 a massive hailstorm hit Erie, PA. The largest hailstone recorded in the storm had shattered, but after reassembly a newspaper estimated its original weight at 2 pounds. About how big would this hailstone have been?

Answer: it would have been a sphere with a diameter about the same as a computer CD

A golf ball (1.75 in or 4.4cm diameter) and a lemon are both smaller than this hailstone would have been. Given the density of ice (0.9167 g/cm^3) and the fact that a two-pound piece of ice would have a mass of approximately 0.9091 kg, it would have formed a sphere with a diameter of approximately 12.373 cm, or 4.87 in. A computer CD has a diameter of 5 in or 12.8 cm. An LP, if you can find one, will be either 10 in (25 cm) or 12 in (30 cm) in diameter, much larger than even this monster hailstone.

The Erie storm did not affect the whole town, but the affected areas were hard hit when the storm struck, between 5 and 6 pm. A building under construction collapsed, leading to the deaths of at least 8 people. A pedestrian was killed when a ladder fell from another construction site.

4. You often see a white 'carpet' on the ground after a hailstorm, but it is usually not very deep, and disappears fairly quickly. At about midnight on July 7, 2009, a very large thunderstorm left an ankle-deep layer of hailstones on the ground in an area near which major northeastern US city?

Answer: New York, NY

The storm hit Yonkers, NY (which borders the New York City borough of The Bronx and is 2 miles (3 km) north of Manhattan) just before midnight, and, as well as leaving over 2 inches (5.1 cm) of hailstones covering the ground, caused power loss to over 17,000 homes, major loss of trees, flash flooding and a mudslide.

5. In December of 1967 a hailstorm hit Los Angeles county in California. Most of the damage was caused by a lightning strike on what structure?

Answer: an oil tank

A lightning bolt hit an oil tank in Manhattan Beach, causing an explosion that covered much of the South Bay with oil. This in turn led to a massive emergency cleanup of the beaches, which form an important part of the city's real estate and tourism industries. Manhattan Beach is home to the Manhattan Beach Open Beach Volleyball tournament, which has been referred to as "The Wimbledon of Beach Volleyball".

6. In April of 1999, the costliest hailstorm in Australia's history hit suburbs of its largest city during the early evening, causing massive damage to property, including 25 aircraft at the international airport. In which state capital did this occur?

Answer: Sydney, NSW

The storm struck Sydney's central and eastern suburbs in the early evening of April 14. In terms of property damage (about 20,000 properties and 40,000 cars were damaged, to a value of about 1.5 billion Australian dollars), this was the costliest hailstorm to hit an Australian city through mid-2009.

In adjusted terms, it ranks third amongst all Australian disasters, behind the Newcastle earthquake of 1989 and Cyclone Tracey's devastation of Darwin in 1974. The largest stone measured had a diameter of 9.5 cm (3.75 inches, the size of a large orange or small grapefruit). One fisherman was struck by lightning and killed during the storm.

7. On 19 June 1992, two closely-spaced batches of severe thunderstorms dumped hailstones up to 4.5 inches (over 11 cm) in diameter across several counties in which mid-west American state?

Answer: Kansas

The storms, occurring within six hours of each other, ranged across Sedgwick, including the city of Wichita, and surrounding counties in south-central Kansas. Over 10,000 homes were damaged (estimated cost $US 500 million), and the crops in many wheat fields were a total loss (estimated cost $US 100 million). This thunderstorm incident ranks as one of the worst ever to hit Kansas.

8. The costliest hailstorm in US history moved along a path south of Interstate Highway 70 from eastern Kansas, across Missouri, into southwestern Illinois on 10 April 2001. Which country had a 2008 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that roughly equaled the cost of this storm?

Answer: Sierra Leone

This supercell thunderstorm produced widespread destructive hail along its track, with numerous reports of golfball to baseball sized hail (45-70 mm, or 2-3 inches in diameter). Almost every home and business in Northern St. Louis County was damaged by the damaging hail, including 22 planes at Lambert International Airport. As well as the hail, tornadoes were reported in Johnson and Pettis counties.

Damage was estimated at over $2 billion (USD). That is approximately equal to the estimated GDP of Sierra Leone for 2008. Japan's was around $5 trillion, while China's and Germany's were approximately $4 trillion.

9. While the cost of hailstorms is usually measured in terms of property damage, they can also involve injury and death. On July 11, 1990 forty-seven people were injured by hail in Denver, Colorado. What were they doing at the time?

Answer: riding a Ferris wheel

In the late afternoon of July 11, 1990 a severe hailstorm hit Denver, causing $625 million in insured property damage, mostly to cars and building roofs. More seriously, 47 people were hospitalized after a power failure left them stranded on a Ferris wheel to be pummeled by softball-sized hailstones.

10. It is not only humans who suffer the effects of hailstorms - other animals can experience serious harm and loss during hailstorms. An article in the Wilson Journal of Ornithology describes the deaths of a number of species of what kind of animal during an evening hailstorm?

Answer: Birds

The article "Mortality at a Night Roost of Great-tailed Grackles and European Starlings During a Spring Hail Storm" (The Wilson Journal of Ornithology 119(2):309-312, 2007) describes hail carnage among birds. According to the abstract, a hailstorm lasting less than 6 minutes, and with hailstones under 20 mm in diameter, led to the death of approximately 7% of female grackles, 12% of male grackles, and 26% of starlings in the area under surveillance. And that was only a fairly mild hail event!

Source: Author looney_tunes

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor bloomsby before going online.
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