What the heck is going on at Huntington Beach? Should we renamed it Hail City?
Locals and tourists were shocked by crazy weather on Monday morning as hail, lightning and rain hit downtown while waterspouts pass along the coast. Look at the beach, it looks like a ski resort!
The hail started at 10:15 am. in Huntington Beach and ended about 20 minutes later and didn’t melt immediately so that it covered the Huntington Beach pier in piles of hail.
Yes, can you imagine, there was a hail snow cover in Huntington Beach! Actually, about a half-inch of hail fell.
A bit more south, a huge snow storm engulfed the Acatama desert, the driest place on Earth! Amazing!
[…] Winter is also going south: Hail storm in Orange County! […]
Saw this first hand. You have to remember hail and snow are very different things from different mechanisms. You can get hail in relatively warm temperatures because it forms much higher in the atmosphere.
I’ve been in So Cal nearly 40 years, and every other winter we get a storm with a nice, tight hail producing storm cell. Happened once right in my neighborhood.- late 90s if I recall correctly. Another one happened right where I work in the early 2000s. This was more fun because it was right on the beach.
So, rare, but it does happen. Regular smatterings of light hail accompany any good storm system here.
Yes thank you!