Nowcasting Hail Size for Non-Supercell Thunderstorms in the Northeastern U. S.

Abstract : Hail size prediction is a difficult task for meteorologists. The most recent method used by the United States Air Force after thunderstorm initiation involves identifying the amount of storm-top divergence and correlating that value to the height of the freezing level. However, this method was based on a study that looked at both supercell and multicell thunderstorms alike. This paper attempts to build off this previous study, although solely looking at non-supercell thunderstorms based on the hypothesis that due to dynamic differences between the storm types, common indicators found in both are not indicative that hail of similar size will be produced.