Baseball-Sized Snowflakes in Central PA
UPDATE: Chris Burt [JessePedia], Author of "Extreme Weather" , wrote in to say that large snowflakes are indeed quite rare and he believes this is the first video documentation of them. He asked if I measured their drop spots to confirm size, unfortunately I did not (didn't have my ruler with me, there was already snow on most of the ground, and I was concentrating on the video). He estimated 3 inches in diameter for the largest and I concur. You can read more about Giant Snowflakes on Page 98 of his book. Most record large flakes are from the 1800's though he showed a photo of 2" or larger flakes in China in 2001.
NEW! DOWNLOAD* ORIGINAL HIGH-RES VIDEO (12 MB)
ORIGINAL POST:
It's not every day that I see weather I've never seen before. Today was that day. Around 10 AM here in State College, Pennsylvania, we were near the edge of the sleet/snow line, but still enough to be in the extremely rare meteorological sweet spot where you get clusters of snowflakes the size of baseballs.
Above is video of Meteo Madness Man (PREMIUM | PRO) enjoying the bizarre weather.
I had never witnessed such an event. Light snow was falling in a slanted fashion, when suddenly huge balls of snow started to plummet to the ground. The video and pictures don't really do it justice, it was something you had to see. The radar reported an unusually high 45 dBZ reading over the top of AccuWeather HQ (download* a loop here).
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