Rain And Hail

Thunderstorms and Hail Tear Through Saskatchewan - Again

More thunderstorms ripped through the province Saturday afternoon and evening, including Saskatoon.

Rob Paula with Environment Canada says isolated severe thunderstorms were reported in southeastern parts of the province, "There was extremely heavy rain, large hail, even some funnel clouds reported."

"Further west, from the Battlefords down through Unity, heavy rain, hail and strong winds were reported through there," Paula said.

Even though the weather wasn't extremely hot, according to Paula, a cold front was passing through which made the air unstable enough to create those thunderstorms.

BBC - 23 Degrees: Dr Joshua Wurman - understanding rain and hail ...

And then there are other fields, we can also look at the difference in the return from horizontal and vertical polarised microwaves and we can tell the difference between hail and rain. Rain, big raindrops look kind of like hamburger buns and they return more energy horizontally, and then vertically, so we can tell if it is heavy rain. Hail stones are very irregularly shaped and they are also tumbling, so if we look at a million of them in our radar volume they average out to zero orientation, so we can tell the difference between hail and rain, like in the areas we were just experiencing outside.