At the moment, one could be forgiven for thinking that weather patterns throughout the world are being determined by someone rolling dice because they seem completely random.
As normally temperate areas experience record heat waves not long after hot areas experienced snow for the first time in recent memory, many of us could only guess at where things would go crazy next.
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Over the weekend, however, we had our answer as a total surprise has just taken place in Mexico.
On Sunday, a freak hail storm struck the city of Guadalajara, Mexico, despite recently recording temperatures as high as 88 degrees Fahrenheit.
As CBS News reported , this left the city covered in at least three feet of ice, with some areas experiencing six-foot piles of it.
Guadalajara is the capital of the west Mexican state of Jalisco and its governor, Enrique Alfaro, took to Twitter to share photos of the scene.
One tweet, as translated from Spanish by CBS News, said , “I was in the place to assess the situation and witnessed scenes I had never seen: hail more than a meter high, and then we wonder if climate change exists.”
The storm has left about 200 homes in the area damaged and the vehicles haven’t fared much better.
Dozens of them were reportedly swept away in both Guadalajara and surrounding districts while the storm was going on.
Although it obviously caused some severe property damage, Alfaro said the ice storm wasn’t responsible for any injuries.
Since the hail fell, however, Jalisco’s civil protection service reported three cases of hypothermia in adults.
Alfaro has also promised that Guadalajara’s streets would be cleared as soon as possible.
To make this happen, local authorities are working with officials in the neighboring city of Tlaquepaque, as well as the Mexican Army.
A hail storm like this was also a first for CBS meteorologist Jeff Berardelli, who called it “remarkable.”
He also said a line of clouds moving southward showed that an atmospheric boundary crossed over the area, which either ignited or increased the hail storm.
Although its unclear whether this meant conditions over Guadalajara had suddenly gone from dry to moist, warm to cool, or simply saw a change in wind direction, the change was dramatic enough to bring the storm about.
As the storm developed, it fed off of warm, moist air on its north side.
Berardelli said that it was able to maintain its intensity over an extended period of time because there was no other storm in the area to compete with, so the hail storm was able to get a steady supply of the fuel it needed.
h/t: CBS News
