High Sierra Topix

What is the largest size hail that you have experienced, Sierra of beyond? Cherry sized hail is the largest I have encountered, decades ago while in Lakes Basin. Was using a tarp, and it was okay, but has me wondering what golfball size or even baseball sized hail, like the one hears about in the central part of US, whether anyone has experienced large size hail while out backpacking.

We had up to golf ball size hail at Pear Lake last September. Probably a good 15-20 minutes of it. It was a bit frightening, but escaped with only two holes in the door of our Copper Spur tent. We encountered more hail yesterday at Moonlight Lake, but it was tiny in comparison to what we got at Pear Lake.

Here in So Lake Tahoe last week, I experienced grape/marble sized hail, but some reported golf ball size hail:

http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/news/1 ... lake-tahoe

but escaped with only two holes in the door of our Copper Spur tent

Any photo's you could post of that would be great.

I'll have to check to see if I still have photos of the holes as we've since repaired the tent. Here's the link to the photos from the trip in general (might have posted last fall): https://www.flickr.com/photos/astrogerl ... 7874924982

Yes I remember the TR, and star tattoo on the foot.

The largest "hail" I've seen was pea-sized. Some of the stuff that looks like hail compresses like styrofoam. I'm sure there must be a name for it.

Back in 2002 I experienced a hail storm that was about half golf ball size, maybe more, in Humphreys Basin, which lasted about 15 minutes.

I was in my tent, and I remember how loud it was, beating down on the tent walls. In fact even after putting earplugs in, it was still more or less deafening. (But my Tarptent held up, no holes.)

The same storm also briefly had some pretty close lightning strikes so it was a memorable experience to be sure. Fortunately it was short in duration.

The largest I've experienced was pea-sized ranging up to marble sized. I was in a thunder/hailstorm that lasted 5.5 hours a mile or so below New Army Pass on the Western side. I was in a borrowed Tarptent Moment that my friend hadn't seam sealed yet and my brother was in my trusty Tarptent Contrail. Both tents held up very well to the hail although the Moment did get a bit drippy after a few hours. I liked the Moment so much that I picked up a Moment DW this year. And yes, I seam sealed the heck out of it

Here are some pics from early in the storm and then as it was winding down.

The largest hail I ever experienced in the High Sierra was large pea sized at Shepherd Pass in 1996. The biggest I've ever seen requires an asterisk.

The largest hail, if you could call it that, was a chunk I saw hit the ground about 100 m in front of me in Sunol Regional Wilderness, eastern SF Bay Area in the spring of 2010 while I was returning to the parking lot after another day teaching my students geologic field mapping. The largest fragment remaining after it broke up upon hitting the ground was bigger than a softball. The original size was probably something around a basketball size. A direct hit would have caused serious bodily harm. The odd thing is that it wasn't raining at the time this thing fell out of the sky. It had in fact rained earlier in the day and it was overcast, but I was pretty shocked when I saw this big white thing fall out of the sky and blow up on the trail in front of me. I looked at the fragments and they appeared to be a conglomeration of smaller hailstones of pea size.