Hail happens when strong thunderstorms throw raindrops so high into the cloud that they freeze, then grow into ice balls until they’re too heavy and fall to the ground as hailstones.

Quick Scoop: Why does it hail?

1. What hail actually is

  • Hail is solid precipitation: balls or lumps of ice called hailstones.
  • Hailstones can be tiny like peas or big like golf balls (or larger), depending on how long they grow inside the storm.
  • They form in powerful thunderstorms, not in light rain showers.

2. The step‑by‑step formation

Think of a thunderstorm cloud as a giant vertical conveyor belt:

  1. Warm, moist air rushes upward in a strong “updraft” inside a thunderstorm.
  1. The air carries liquid water droplets high above the freezing level where the air is below 0°C, so the droplets freeze onto tiny particles (dust, ice) and become small ice pellets.
  1. The updraft keeps tossing these pellets up and down through regions of supercooled water (liquid water that’s below freezing), which freezes in layers onto the pellet each time.
  1. As the ice pellet cycles in the cloud, it grows into a hailstone; stronger and longer‑lasting updrafts mean more trips and thicker layers, so larger hail.
  1. Eventually, the hailstone becomes too heavy for the updraft to support and gravity wins, so it falls to the ground as hail.

A cross‑section of a large hailstone will often show rings or layers, like an onion, because of those repeated growth cycles.

3. When and where hail is likely

  • Hail is most common in strong spring and summer thunderstorms, when warm, moist surface air meets much colder air aloft.
  • Regions with frequent powerful storms and strong vertical winds (like parts of the central U.S. “Hail Alley”) see more large hail.
  • Supercell thunderstorms—with rotating, very strong updrafts—are especially famous for producing big, damaging hailstones.

4. Why hail can be dangerous

  • Large hail carries a lot of energy because it’s heavy and falls fast, so it can dent cars, break windows and roofs, and shred crops.
  • People and animals caught outside can be injured by big hailstones, which is why weather alerts often highlight hail risk.

5. One quick way to picture it

Imagine a tiny ice seed riding an elevator inside a storm cloud.
Each trip up and down past freezing levels adds a new icy coat.
When it gets too chunky for the “elevator” to hold, it drops: that’s hail. 🧊

TL;DR: It hails when powerful thunderstorms shoot water droplets high into freezing air, where they freeze and grow into layered balls of ice, then fall once they’re too heavy for the storm’s updraft to hold.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.