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Can we determine that hail is falling on our home Weather Stations?

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iisfaq:
Can we determine that hail is falling on our home Weather Stations?

Does anyone know if anyone has looked into this?

Is ther any algorithms available for hail?

Obviously it gets cold when it is hailing - but I have not really looked into the exact conditions as detected by my station when a hail storm is occurring.

I know that most commercial use radar for detecting hail but it would be nice to know for us at home!

Chris

WeatherHost:
Can we determine that hail is falling on our home Weather Stations?

If the outdoor sensors get smashed to bits, you can assume there was hail.  B)

 Obviously it gets cold when it is hailing -

Not necessarily.  It only needs to be cold enough aloft.  You can have hail at the ground in 80 degree weather.


In the US, there are radar products available free to the public that indicate hail aloft.  Not sure about NZ.

Weather Display:
using disdrometer you could
(Weather Display supports a home made one, interfaced to a sound card...the rain drops make sound...and that is plotted...hail might make a different signature)

iisfaq:

--- Quote from: Weather Display on May 17, 2012, 03:42:33 AM ---using disdrometer you could
(Weather Display supports a home made one, interfaced to a sound card...the rain drops make sound...and that is plotted...hail might make a different signature)

--- End quote ---

Hi Brian

Do you know if it does make a different sound? I assume you have done some testing..

I will take a look and see what I can find - Down in CHCH we will probably get a bit of hail over the next few months - do you get any near Auckland?

Chris

SLOweather:
It's easy to make. My prototype is a piezo transducer from Radio Shack, a cable with a mini phone plug on it, a pane of Lexan from Home Depot, and a 1" x 4" wood frame to mount the Lexan on.

Break the transducer out of its plastic shell and epoxy it to the center of the Lexan. I roughed up the Lexan first with some fine sandpaper. Assemble the frame, and stick the Lexan to it with some double sided foam tape. Connect the cable to the transducer and plug it in to the computer's mic jack.



My first experiments were recording the sounds of rain. Then I used Radio-Skypipe to plot the trace during storms.



you can clearly see the bands of rain come through, and the intensity build.

You could record rain and hail separately and see what the sonic differences are, maybe apply FFT to the output to determine rain or hail. Somewhere I have a couple of wav files I recorded. I'll see if I can fine them.
 

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