I finally managed to get around to creating a trip report to the Sugar Bowl Grizzly Den in British Columbia, and in doing so, was reviewing some photographs to include.
One particular photo really wasn’t all that exciting. I came into a bit of rain storm and pulled off on a side road briefly once some hail started. I enjoy strange and some-what violent weather and was hoping to grab an interesting shot of the clouds. That didn’t happen, but what did happen was a photograph of the hood of the Jeep Wrangler. In that shot is an exploding hail stone.
hail stone explodes on the hood of the Jeep
Hailstones sometimes shatter when striking a solid surface such as asphalt and concrete; and here I was, very fortunate enough to capture the moment of impact when one did just that, but on the Jeep’s hood. You can click on the image for a larger view and see the hailstone disintegrating violently into a spray of icy shrapnel. It’s too bad I didn’t have a better camera at the time, with a high speed shutter, or better yet, slow motion video of it – but then, being able to time something like that would be next to impossible.
When the brief storm was all said and done, I did notice a few very small dents from the hail. As you can see in the photo, the hail wasn’t all that large. I’m not too worried about the few tiny dimples left in the hood.
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