A China Southern Airlines Airbus A380-800 has descended rapidly after striking a band of heavy hail at great altitude, cracking windscreens and denting the aircraft’s nose with a pattern of indentations resembling a shotgun blast.
The big China Southern plane was performing flight CZ 3101 from Guangzhou to Beijing and was cruising at about 37,100 feet (11,300 metres) near Henan in central China when it ran into a hailstorm.
The noise in the cockpit must have been deafening. As the windscreens cracked under the onslaught of hail, the crew performed a rapid descent to 16,700 feet (5100 metres) and continued to Beijing for a safe landing about 90 minutes later. On the ground, the aircraft was checked thoroughly by engineers prior to repairs being carried out. A protective covering was applied to the plane’s hail-damaged nose.
Hail forms in strong thunderstorm clouds, particularly those with intense updrafts, high liquid water content, great vertical extent, large water droplets, and where a good portion of the cloud layer is below freezing 0 °C (32 °F).
Hail to the giant! Damage to the giant A380’s nose is covered with a protective wrap, looking rather like a Band-Aid
Thunderstorms develop to heights between 35,000 and 45,000 feet (latter is 13,700 metres), but the tops of severe thunderstorms that produce large hail and damaging winds can reach 60,000 feet (18,000 metres).
A storm’s updraft, with upwardly directed wind speeds as high as 180 km/h, blows the forming hailstones up the cloud. As the hailstone ascends it passes into areas of the cloud where the concentration of humidity and supercooled water droplets varies. The hailstone’s growth rate changes depending on the variation in humidity and supercooled water droplets that it encounters.
A large hailstone, about 6cm in diameter
The heaviest hailstone ever recorded weighed slightly over a kilogram (1.02 kg) and landed in Bangladesh in 1986. The largest ever officially measured was 20 cm in diameter, in Vivian, South Dakota in 2010.
Photo shows windscreen shattering in the China Southern A380 caused by hail
Written by Peter Needham
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