Hailstones Can Rise and Fall Inside Thunderstorms Multiple Times

Inside the most violent thunderstorms, hailstones don't fall straight down. Instead, they get caught in powerful updrafts of rising air that can push them back up into colder regions of the cloud, where they accumulate another layer of ice. This cycle repeats over and over, sometimes dozens of times, creating hailstones with concentric rings like tree rings. A single hailstone can spend 10 to 20 minutes bouncing up and down within a supercell thunderstorm before finally falling to the ground. The largest hailstone ever recorded in the United States fell in South Dakota in 2010 and measured 8 inches across, roughly the size of a softball. It had cycled through the updraft so many times that it weighed nearly two pounds. These violent vertical movements occur in storms where updraft speeds exceed 100 miles per hour. The hailstone's journey ends only when it becomes too heavy for the updraft to support anymore, at which point it plummets earthward at terminal velocity. This process explains why large hail typically occurs only in the most severe thunderstorms and why hail can cause such catastrophic damage to crops, vehicles, and buildings when it finally reaches the ground.