April 7th: Hailstorm, Nr Holmsley

I was lucky I took my camera in the car with me today because I expected some showers in the late afternoon. Sure enough, on the drive home, I noticed a striking shower just to my SW. It was positioned right over my route home, so pulled up just before reaching it to get some shots of the rainfall and dark cloudbase:

It was clearly a very localised shower because I was dry whilst taking these shots, and clear sky can be seen beyond:

I drove ahead after a few minutes, to find a surprise covering of hail just 100yds from where I was parked!:

The hailstones were reasonably large (for here) at about 5-10mm across (1cm). The letter 'n' on the lens cap is approx. 6mm tall:

The road was covered in a slippery slush which made it quite treacherous:

It was extremely local however because at the curve in the road in the distance in this photo there was no hail at all. The hailswathe couldn't have been more than 200yds across: