Large Hail Impacts Mourenx, France Earlier in the Afternoon on Friday! (credit: Meteo Europe)

DISCUSSION: As of much earlier in the day on Friday, there were several areas of strong to severe thunderstorms moving across many parts of northern Spain and southern France.  As these storms continued to broaden in coverage in concert with increasing daytime heating, the core updrafts of many of these thunderstorms became quite strong.  As the updraft strength within some of these thunderstorm continued to increase more significantly, there proportional ability to suspend increasingly heavier ice particles within the updraft increased as well.  Thus, as ice particles continued to be repeatedly thrown back up into the heart of these updrafts, the associated ice particles grew into larger hailstones.  Often times, these updrafts which are able to support such large hailstones can be as strong as 150 to 200 mph in order to suspend such large hailstones.  As shown above, some of these hailstones grew to 2.00 inches or larger which produced substantial damage across many areas. 

To learn more about other high-impact weather events occurring across Europe, be sure to click here!

©2017 Meteorologist Jordan Rabinowitz