Spain's giant hail event worsened by marine heat waves, study finds
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Hail is a semi-frequent visitor to winter, and occasionally summer, seasons across the globe and tends to pass by in a short but sharp downpour that can often be overlooked. However, sometimes these meteorological phenomena are hard to ignore. This was the case on 30 August 2022, when Gerona, north-eastern Spain, experienced a severe event in which individual hailstones reached a massive 12cm—the largest ever documented in the country. This led to serious damage to buildings, cars and agricultural areas, as well as 67 injuries and one fatality.
Untangling the cause of this unusually extreme hail event is at the heart of new research published in Geophysical Research Letters. Professor Maria Luisa Martin, of Universidad de Valladolid, Spain, and colleagues investigated the role a record-breaking marine heat wave had in exacerbating the hail storm.
