While we're mostly used to hailstones being relatively small and somewhat annoying, they can easily move up to much larger sizes.
It's been reported yesterday that Turkey - Istanbul, specifically - was hit with a hail storm that featured stones approximately nine centimetres in diameter. Just to put that in perspective, a regulation-size golf ball is approximately five centimetres and a tennis ball is seven centimetres. A baseball is around eight centimetres in diameter.
The hail stones hitting Turkey yesterday were nine centimetres. Here's a video taken yesterday by Turkish news service TR724.
Istanbul, yesterday. Hail, reportedly up to 9cm in diameter. pic.twitter.com/IGCKe0UTKS
— Alex Andreou (@sturdyAlex) July 28, 2017
Amazingly, only a few injuries have been reported from the storm so far. In some cases, hail stones were reported to have shattered car windows and, in one extreme case, damaged the nose of an airplane and the cockpit windows A Ukranian flight over Istanbul was forced to make an emergency landing when the airplane was hit with hail.
In #Istanbul a #Ukrainian pilot landed a #Turkish #plane w/ 121 passengers on board - heavily damaged by hail storm & with zero visibility. pic.twitter.com/AL5RMf5iR1
— olexander scherba (@olex_scherba) July 28, 2017
Via Twitter