A hailstorm has covered a big city in Mexico with ice during a hailstorm in the middle of the summer.
The surprise storm hit the Mexican city of Guadalajara on June 30, leaving up to six feet of snow, according to CBS News, despite the 88-degree summer weather the city has had on average in the past month.
“I’ve never seen such scenes in Guadalajara,” said Jalisco State Governor Enrique Alfaro, via Agence France Presse (AFP).
People walk in Guadalajara, Mexico after a hail storm buried vehicles and damaged buildings
???? @35mmfotografia pic.twitter.com/kZpv4yWTir— AFP news agency (@AFP) June 30, 2019
Guadalajara is located in the Mexican state of Jalisco, about 290 miles northwest of Mexico City. The city contains around 5 million people, AFP reported.
Around 200 homes and businesses were damaged by hail and at least 50 vehicles were swept away in parts of the area with hills. Some vehicles were buried under ice pellets, Agence France Presse reported. The hail affected at least six neighborhoods around the edges of Guadalajara.
No deaths were reported, but the state Civil Protection office said two people showed some signs of hypothermia in the storm’s aftermath, according to the news outlet.
“The storm is feeding off warm, moist air to its north of which it has a seemingly endless supply partly because it’s the only thunderstorm cluster around so it can hog all the energy, it doesn’t have to share with other storm activity,” said CBS News meteorologist Jeff Berardelli. “This all lead to a tall, long-lasting storm redeveloping over the same area for an extended period of time leading to unprecedented hail piles.”
The Mexican army and local authorities were sent out to use heavy machinery to deal with the ice, NPR reported.
Images and video posted online of show cars and semi-trucks buried in thick hail.
A city in Mexico has been covered in ice following a freakish summer hailstorm.
Guadalajara woke up Sunday morning to more than 3 feet of ice in some areas: https://t.co/RYKbbehyHd pic.twitter.com/AoZg2FQNNJ
— CNN (@CNN) July 1, 2019
Hailstorms form when warm, moist air rises and forms showers and storms, according to the BBC. The warm air rises and meets the lower temperatures at higher altitudes, causing pellets of ice to form.
The size of the hailstones in Guadalajara were less than one centimeter in diameter, much smaller than the golf-ball sized hailstones sometimes seen during hailstorms in the United States, the BBC reported.
An unusual storm system unleashed a freakishly large amount of hail, up to five feet in some places, Sunday, June 30, in Guadalajara, Mexico. Crews were left digging out stranded vehicles in a surreal wintry scene: https://t.co/R7hIN2nxLH pic.twitter.com/tIA4WPlQgi
— AccuWeather (@accuweather) July 1, 2019
Hail is not unusual for western Mexico at this time of year, but the amount that fell is, The New York Times reported.
“Fundamentally, hailstorms are not unusual in this part of the world,” said Chris Westbrook, meteorologist at the University of Reading in England, via the NY Times. “What is unusual is that the conditions were just right to get an awful lot in one go.”
‘Never-before-seen natural phenomena’ in Guadalajara, Mexico due to a freak hail storm that has buried the city in ice. pic.twitter.com/3K5dzuTUSk
— DW News (@dwnews) July 1, 2019
Hail is more the product of severe thunderstorm activity than winter weather, even though hail brings ice. Thunderstorm activity can lead to updrafts that sweep the raindrops upwards to reach the cold air, where it can freeze into hail, according to ThoughtCo.
