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Weather Glossary
Hail is the formation of ice from water droplets inside clouds. It forms during severe thunderstorms when the winds inside the thunderstorms forces air up and down inside the clouds. These wind movements are called updrafts and downdrafts. They are powerful and can hold up heavy pieces of ice high up in the clouds. When the ice balls get too heavy for the winds to hold them up they fall to the ground. These ice chunks, hail, fall like raindrops during severe thunderstorms, especially thunderstorms that could produce a tornado.
			Picture a baseball dropping from the sky out of an airplane at 30,000 ft. Imagine that hundreds of thousands of baseballs, reaching speeds of 120 mph, falling on and around you. That is what it would be like to be caught in a hail storm.
The largest hail stone that was ever recorded was about 17 inches long . This is a picture of the average hail stone that you would see d if it ever hailed at your house. Any piece of hail could cause an injury to you or your property because it falls so far and so fast from the thunderstorm clouds.

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Photographic Citations: Photographic citations can be found by passing the mouse over the photograph.

Text Citations: http://www.erh.noaa.gov/er/cae/svrwx/hail/hail.htm