HOUSTON – After a stormy afternoon for most of the greater Houston area, a weather surprise was unfolding for the evening hours. Soon after the cold front passed around 6 p.m., many residents started to hear what sounded like a bag of Skittles being poured onto their houses and cars.
What happened?
As the cold air was moving in behind the front, the atmosphere wasn’t done squeezing out the leftover showers and thunderstorms through late Monday night. Embedded within those storms were frozen water droplets, or little ice balls, which we generally know as hail. They form as the water droplets get sucked up into the storms, fall and melt some, then get refrozen as they get pulled back up into the storm.
As the storms started to collapse, they released the mostly pea-size hail balls that had been tossed around the storm like lottery balls in the ball hopper. That’s when a lot of our Click2Pin users started snapping pictures and videos of the hail and in some cases, graupel (which is like a Dipping Dots ice cream ball) that was falling all over SE Texas!
You can check out some of Monday’s pins here: Heavy rain, dark skies, high winds: See photos, videos on Click2Pins as severe storms hit Houston area⛈️
What about my dirty car?
The cold front originated from the Pacific and sped across west Texas moving at times, close to 50 mph! As you might guess, winds that strong will kick up a lot of that west Texas dirt and dust. Those dust particles got sucked up into the thunderstorms along the cold front as it moved across west and central Texas. As the hail balls formed, they also trapped some of those dust particles inside of them.
Now, this normally wouldn’t be a problem, however, as the hail fell across yards and on top of cars, it melted and the strong winds behind the cold front dried the water droplets, leaving a nice, dirty film of dust over most cars that were left outside Monday night! Looks like it’s time to hit the car wash this week!