It’s certainly been a miserable, yet interesting day so far as far as our local weather goes. We started the day with a round of thunderstorms just aftermidnight that rumbled through the Rochester area at about 2:30, producing pea sized hail and heavy rainfall. We picked up about 0.30 inches in northwest Rochester in that hour long shower and the landscape was thoroughly covered in small hail. Some people in Rochester reported almost an inch of hail covering their yards before dawn from this event.
Pea sized hail covered the parking lot at KTTC before dawn this morning and then again in the mid morning hours.
A second round of enhanced precipitation, possibly involving elevated thunderstorms, came through the area at about 8:30 am, and dropped anouht quarter of an inch ofrain and produced some small hail as well as some sleet, or ice pellets. It’s a little difficult to say exactly if it was one or the other or both as surface temperatures cooled to 34 degrees during that round of moderate precipitation and temperatures aloft were close to freezing as well. It’s possible that hail formed along a line of weak thunderstorms and then as the air became dynamically cooled, sleet followed.
The second round of heavy rain and hail as seen on NEXRAD radar here at the station. The enhanced rain echoes of yellow to the east of Rochester were associated with what appeared to be hail and the purple echoes behind that line were associated with the sleet that passed through the area, lingering for several minutes.
We’ll have some more showers in the area today and this evening with a chance for some thunderstorms, some possibly producing soem small hail at times. There will be an even better chance for some sleet mixing with that rain late tonight and tomorrow as colder air filters into the area behind this storm system as it moves to the east. A little snow is expected tomorrow as well. This is definitely quintessential March weather for southeastern Minnesota!
Posted under hail
This post was written by tschmidt on March 22, 2011
