Alberta is home to the largest hailstone ever recorded in Canada.
The record-breaking chunk of ice was recovered by researchers with the Northern Hail Project (NHP) after Monday’s storm in central Alberta.
The 292.71 gram stone was recovered in Markerville, just 35 kilometres outside of Red Deer. The previous record was set on July 31, 1973 in Cedoux, Saskatchewan with a weight of 290 grams.
The DVD-sized hailstone diameter measured at 12.3 centimetres, surpassing the size-record set on July 31, 1987 in Edmonton, also known as Black Friday.
“It had been on the ground about 20 minutes before they got there so there would have been some melting but not too much more fortunately,” says NHP executive director Dr. Julian Brimelow.
Researchers gathered several hailstones including the record breaker and brought them to Red Deer College where they inspected them in one of the labs.
The team that found the stone was led by researcher Francis Lavigne-Theriault.
“It wasn’t until I returned and started sifting through the bags that I found the record-breaking stone,” said Lavigne-Theriault said in a release from the university. “It was bagged with other stones without realizing what we had in our possession.”
The NHP, which is based out of Western University in London, Ontario, was formed earlier this year. Dr. Brimelow says his team couldn’t have had a better start for the program after finding the record-breaking stone.
“If I were to say where would you find the biggest hailstone in Canada I wouldn’t have probably said somewhere in Saskatchewan or southern Manitoba. I would not have told you in Alberta.”
While Alberta is known for its hail, the size is typically smaller than a baseball. However, meteorologist Sara Hoffman says the softball sized hail – just a few fell Monday afternoon – were caused by a strong updraft.
“Once that hailstone has a terminal velocity stronger than the updraft, it will actually fall to the surface,” says Hoffman. “A weaker updraft will have smaller hail, and a stronger updraft will have larger hail because it requires larger hail to overcome the strength of that updraft to fall.”
To try and limit the size of the storm-produced hail, the Alberta Weather Management Society sent planes above the storm for a process called seeding, which Terry Krauss with the society says is meant to increase precipitation with the use of silver iodide.
“We want it to be rain,” he says. ”Or small, small hail sizes so that we’re making the precipitation more efficient.”
Krauss says nine seeding flights took place Monday on what he says was the 16th hail warning day of the year.
But despite seeding the clouds, Krauss believes nothing else could have been done to limit the size.
“Mother nature can still provide multiple situations and that happened when it sucks in nearby rain showers and no we cannot control that,” he adds.