FALLING FROM THE SKY
Mexican city covered in ice, France hit by giant hailstones, frozen stowaway plummets to Earth
MONSTER HAIL
A heavy hailstorm on 30 June left six suburbs in the Mexican city of Guadalajara carpeted in a thick layer of ice, up to 5ft (1.5m) thick in places, halfburying vehicles. Hundreds of houses were damaged. There was also flooding and fallen trees, but no one is thought to have been hurt. Pedestrians struggled to cross the mounds of slush, children tried to toboggan down the pavement and soldiers used bulldozers to clear roads.
The storm hit very quickly, between about 1:50am (6:50am GMT) and 2:10am local time, when the air temperature dropped suddenly from 22˚C (72˚F) to 14˚C (57˚F). The city had been basking in temperatures of more than 30˚C (86˚F). The hail probably melted on contact due to the high temperatures, forming a layer of water upon which more hail could land and float. This combination of water and hail likely moved down a slope, with obstacles such as buildings blocking the flow and allowing more ice to accumulate on top. Although hailstorms are not uncommon in the mountain-fringed city of five million people, which is 5,000ft (1,520m) above sea level, no one can recall anything on this scale, with entire streets becoming rivers of ice, paralysing transport for hours. The actual hailstones were relatively small, less than 1cm in diameter, and nothing like the golf-ball sized hail seen at times in severe storms in the US. BBC News, 1 July; Times, D.Mail, 2 July 2019.
• Hailstones the size of eggs battered the city of Chengde in Hebei, northern China, for 10 minutes on the night of 15 May, destroying homes, roofs and trees – though no casualties were reported. One video shows the tiles of a roof falling off piece by piece as the massive lumps of ice hit it. A man is seen clearing a road that had been completely covered with hail. The adverse weather also left batches of chestnut trees barren, another clip shows. “My chestnut trees are gone! No chestnuts for us to eat this year,” one woman was heard exclaiming. The thunderstorm also battered the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall. dailymail.co.uk, 16 May 2019.
• Storms on 15 June hurled hailstones the size of ping-pong balls on the crops of southeastern France, prompting authorities to declare a state of “natural emergency”. The pellets bored holes through protective netting to hammer the fruit below, turning much of it to pulp and putting farmers at risk of bankruptcy. Many lost 80 to 100 per cent of their crops. Worst hit was the Auvergne-Rhône-Alps region, known as the “orchard of France”. The hail also wreaked destruction on part of the Saint-Joseph vineyards and reportedly wiped out half of the Croze-Hermitage harvest, despite it being equipped with anti-hail devices. “In 35 years, I’ve never seen such violence,” said Pierre Combat, president of a wine inspection unit. A tourist was killed in the HauteSavoie when a tree crashed on her camping vehicle and a woman drowned in Lake Geneva when her boat sank. The storm also damaged 465 boats taking part in a regatta on the lake. Guardian, 17 June; D.Telegraph, 18 June 2019.
FROZEN STOWAWAYS
John Baldock, an Oxford University graduate in his 20s, was sunbathing in his back garden in Offerton Road, Clapham, south London, on the afternoon of Sunday, 30 June, and fell asleep. At about 3.35pm he was awoken by a loud “whomp”. The frozen body of a man, wearing a blue shirt and denim jeans, had landed 3ft (90cm) away, shattering a concrete path and making a crater in the lawn. One neighbour said the impact was so loud they thought a bomb had gone off. A stowaway, described by a witness as “frozen like an ice block”, had fallen more than 3,500ft (1,070m) from a Kenya Airways flight from Nairobi as it approached Heathrow Airport. (A plane spotter who had been following the flight of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner on an app from Clapham Common had seen the body fall). It could have been much worse: had the body fallen two seconds later, it would have landed on a packed Clapham Common, just 300 yards away. On inspecting the aircraft, police found a bag containing food, water and clothing at the rear left landing gear. The 6,840km (4,250-mile) flight from Nairobi takes eight hours and 50 minutes. The stowaway would have been starved of oxygen and endured temperatures of around minus 60˚C at an altitude of 40,000ft (12,200m).
A witness looking out of a window said there was “blood all over the walls of the garden” adding: “I spoke to Heathrow. They said this happens once every five years.” In 2010, a 20-year-old man from Romania survived in the undercarriage of a private jet on a flight from Vienna to Heathrow. In 2012, Jose Matada fell to his death from a British Airways flight inbound from Angola. Mr Matada, originally from Mozambique, was found on the pavement in East Sheen on 9 September. An inquest into his death heard he is believed to have survived freezing temperatures for most of the 12-hour flight. Kikmet Komur, 32, froze to death in the landing gear compartment of a British Airways plane in July 2013. He was trying to enter the UK to see his girlfriend. Carlito Vale from Mozambique was found dead on the roof of notonthehighstreet.com’s headquarters on Kew Road, Richmond, having clung to the undercarriage of a British Airways plane in June 2015. A second man miraculously survived the same 11-hour flight from Johannesburg, South Africa, while hiding in the undercarriage of the plane. D.Mirror, BBC News, Eve. Standard, 2 July 2019.