Tuesday, August 19 2008
What the Hail?
The hail you say?
Hail starts out as droplets of rain miles above in the clouds. Updrafts hold them aloft, preventing them from reaching the ground. The droplets freeze as they rise, due to colder temperatures aloft. Drops of supercooled water(liquid water colder than freezing) impact ice these pellets and freeze instantly, increasing the size of the pellet. Pellets can actually fall and rise several times, getting larger and larger as more water freezes on them. When hail pellets become too heavy to be lifted by the updraft they fall to the ground. The stronger the updraft, the larger the hail. Updrafts of 90 km/h (55 mph) create hail the size of golf balls, and updrafts of 145 km/h (90 mph) can create hail the size of baseballs.
Looking like one of the people your parents warned you about.
While I appreciate the phenomenon of hail, it's not my friend. I was once riding my motorcycle through Manning Park on a beatiful summer's day. As was my custom at the time, I was riding at extra-legal speeds, but with full armour and a full-face helmet (my third helmet, the first two busted in crashes) when I encountered a funny looking patch of weather ahead. It looked like one of those rain squalls that has a distinct frontline, as you get sometimes in summer storms. I slowed down as rapidly as my evil beast of a motorcycle would allow (rain+roads oily from weeks of hot weather="no" joke on motorcycles). When I hit the front of the weather, I was still doing over 100 km/h. This was unfortunate, as it was a storm of hail, about the size of children's marbles. It was like driving through an angry metalshop, where very strong ironmongers, equipped with ball-peen hammers were hitting me, over and over and over again, very quickly and with plenty of malice. I kept slowing down, screaming the whole time as the impacts made my armour feel about as effective as tissue paper. When I got off the bike (and laid down and moaned) later, I was covered in bruises and weeping welts. Why do so many of my stories end with that phrase, I wonder?
And hail continues its work in France. According to Clive Coates' website:
The southernmost part of the Mâconnais and the northern sector of the Beaujolais suffered a devastating hail-storm during the night of Thursday 7th. August. Reports circulate of hail stones as big as tennis balls, not only knocking of what would have been this year's harvest, but badly damaging the green shoots as well. As it is this year's canes which will provide the wood on which next year's harvest will develop, this damage may well compromise the 2009 vintage. We saw this in 2004/2005.
Hail damaged vines. Oh, the grapemanity!
Uh-oh. There go the prices for 2008 Beaujolais, Pouilly Fuissé and Mâconnais. I can only assume that the weather gods aren't fans of Moulin-à-Vent. Luckily, we don't get any product from these regions right now, so Winexpert French-content products aren't going to be affected. For myself, I'm running out for a couple of bottles of Mâconnais right after work, before prices can get jacked up.
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