 Good afternoon everybody if you're just joining us welcome to our full day of fun Super Science Saturday And for those of you who have been with us, I bet you've gotten hungry again I know I have we have been Scienceing all over the place today and that really works up an appetite So I don't know if some of you were with us this morning For our morning Super Science snack with chef Nancy from the N car cafeteria and with Scientist Tim, but they are back again this afternoon because we can never have too many snacks, right? so I'm gonna go ahead and turn it over to them and Let them tell you what they're up to now Hi everyone, I See chef Nancy, and it's time for an afternoon snack I'm still like salivating from all those fabulous marshmallows and Raindrop marshmallows and what are we doing now? Raindrop marshmallows are delicious I encourage everybody to try them and let me step back and talk to Nicholas again because Nicholas asked a question earlier about how Easy they were to make and marshmallows are super easy I just want to tell you that again 20 minutes probably all done They need a couple of hours to set up and then what happens next is we start having fun So hi friends chef Nancy here again from the Mesa lab home kitchen While Tim and the rest of the wizards are helping from all the other lab places everywhere else in town Okay, so this morning remember we talked about dust particles And how dust particles create a blanket on top of snow causing it to melt a little too fast We also talked about how that same particle of dust helps a raindrop form Just like we needed a particle of gelatin to help us form our marshmallows, right? but Tell me what happens when a raindrop or in our case? Marshmallows change because of something else happening in the atmosphere in and around them so I've been fiddling around with our marshmallows here And let's see what has happened when our marshmallow rain Has changed because of the storm that I've got going on in this pan here. I gotta move my pan so you can see it first I Warmed my marshmallow raindrops with a little bone and vanilla And in my storm bowl here. I actually have snowflakes now in this case It's crispy cereal, but I want to show you what happens when my warm rain That I've blended into something new Meets a Different temperature something else happening in the atmosphere in and around my storm My snowflakes look at them go They're blending they're mixing and they're turning into something new Now I'm gonna put some butter on my hands here because this is warm and one of the ways that you can keep sticky things off of your hands Is by butter in your hands, so I've got butter over here Butter in my hands like crazy here butter and all my hands like crazy just like you would soak Any ideas do you know what our rain has become here? Look at this I think our raindrops have become grapple Not a weird word grapple is formed when perfectly pretty snowflakes here that they formed They bump into really cold rain That hasn't turned into snow yet and what falls out of the sky from these storms Is crispier Than snow, but definitely not as squishy as rain And this certainly does not splat like slush In fact Grapple actually it really looks like dipping dots here tiki the wonder dog likes dipping dots Here at the mason home kitchen my grapple is really super tasty. Have you guys ever seen grapple? Look for this winter on those really weird coldish days when it can't rain or it won't snow I'm sorry about tiki the wonder dog. He is really excited right? Anyway, let's see the best thing about grapple is when it goes From the sky Into my mouth and belly Okay, that's crazy. I got to wipe off my hands a little bit Let me show you When you're making your grapple you got to get it down here in a pan and push it all into place And that way you can cut it up for later and you can actually make it into a bowl of grapple Kind of like what I've got here. I'll be able to snack on this later when I'm watching a movie tonight But now I'm going to spread this out in a pan and we'll break it apart into our grapple later That's all set aside Now remember I talked about having a wet towel when you're doing sticky things So I can quick wipe off my hand because I want to talk about one more type of precipitation And it's one of the craziest forms It's called hail Now you will definitely need an adult to help you with this recipe because it's a hailstorm And hailstones can hurt This time our raindrops that we're developing In our storm ball look like popcorn. Mm-hmm. These are our raindrops Beautiful individual drops of rain But the temperature of the storm is going to be much different this time because this time in my storm ball I have a super hot mix It's water corn syrup sugar salt and vanilla Now watch what happens when my really strong storm ends up going way high And gets into my popcorn rain What's happening is that is the air hit Oh, let's get it set up here I'm buttering my hands again When rain goes way high into a storm it hits air that is super cold and it starts turning into hailstones Our hailstones are forming from my hot candy hitting my cool popcorn rain Now in real storms strong updraft wings in the thunderstorm can push hailstorm Hailstones back up into the coldest region where they grow even bigger And then they start falling out of the sky Because no storm can hang on to hailstones forever And eventually the hailstorm becomes too heavy to be lifted up by the strong updraft winds and they fall to the ground So i'm gonna start making hailstones here My hailstones can be any size and any shape Now let me ask you guys have you ever tried to save and freeze a hailstone? Because some really really big hailstones have been saved by the scientists And they've even made models of them to show us how big they can become Hey tim do you have any of those? I absolutely do and I think everybody's gonna be surprised when they see just how big these hailstones are Normally we're used to the the ones that look maybe like a grape or pea size or maybe even golf football size But look at the size of these hailstones and I have two different models Because they can be All kinds of sizes and they happen in lots of places all over the world Well, maybe unluckily we get them in the united states This was the original world record verified by charlie knight one of our Scientists here who's the ice expert back in 1970? He verified that this was one piece of hail that had lots and lots of Spikes on the top of it as the water on that hailstone froze As the hailstone dropped down and weighed 1.67 pounds and then in 2006 This one got replaced with this hailstone which weighed 2.1 pounds And you might say they look the same size but if you hold them close together it's slightly bigger And what's missing is some of the spikes They didn't actually come out when we made the mold of the of the hailstone But 2.1 pounds And strangely enough This one has already been replaced with another record size hailstone in south america It was three years ago four years ago now that hailstone was recovered And we don't have a copy of that one yet, but Strangely enough if you would like to interact with a hailstone We have a virtual hailstone That you can interact with online and we'll put that the link to that virtual hailstone in the chat And then you can go to that and check out even another stone. It's from arora in the west It's funny, but not them really looking really There we go Those look insane. I mean just I mean they just look weird. They look wild I can't believe anything like that fell out of this guy. You guys my dog is so excited about this I have a super science saturday dog. I think you know I can't believe that anybody would actually collect a hailstone and put it into their freezer, but wow I mean honestly a six or eight inch hailstone fell from the sky I would grab it and put it in the freezer And I would probably call you guys next Strangely enough nancy we we have those hailstones people collect them because Strange well, maybe it's not strange if a hailstone like that falls in your house A lot of times you have to talk to those people at insurance companies about What caused the damage to your house? So some people will have them in their freezers just because they need to show it to other people And that's one of the ways that we get the hailstones is that people find out like hey Enkar's really interested or specifically Charlie about the ice that falls from the sky And we think the largest a hailstone will ever get will be somewhere around the size of Maybe a size four or size five soccer ball if you know the different sizes of soccer balls But that's as big as we think they'll ever get but this is pretty devastating And we estimate they're falling close to 80 somewhere between 80 and 100 miles an hour when they come out of the sky So if you hear a an alert for severe weather Listen for what that could be and they'll even tell you what's expected for the size of those hailstones I'm pretty sure an umbrella would not help with that. No Okay, well, I got to tell you guys None of these hailstones that I'm making today And I've got a lot of different shapes and sizes here Showing exactly how they can change and be any size in any shape when they come out of the sky But I have to tell you Tim. I'm not going to save any of these today because you know what? They're all my They're really yummy Okay, you guys well, I'm chewing on this popcorn hailstone. I have to bring it up There are so many things that you guys have learned today all in one day But do you think you can remember this while you're playing with your food next time? Rain is precipitation and it can change into so many different things depending on what's happening In and around the storm Keep your umbrellas nearby for those rainy days or months Keep your umbrellas nearby for those rainy days or maybe the grapple days Keep your mittens around for the snow But I don't know what to do about the hail other than run All of our storm snack recipes here today are available in the chat session And please make sure you find them try to make them in your kitchen And take pictures and tell us how the dust affected your your your oyster crackers snow And tell us how your marshmallow rain changed into something else if you make great crispy treats out of it And definitely make some popcorn ball hailstones because they're just really good But if you do that make sure you've got some mom or dad or a grandma or grandpa or anybody that ends adult near with you They're with you Make sure you take pictures and share them with us at hashtag super science saturday Uh until next time i'm not sure that you need to do anything other than keep your weather gear handy What do you think tim? I think that's a great idea and make sure you get that rice crispy treat hailstone Out right up there and start munching on it. I think i'm gonna go get mine Well now wait wait wait a second before everybody starts stuffing your face. There's a question We had a question from the audience And then i'm gonna go stuff my face too because that just made me hungry So somebody's wondering tim and nancy What is the evidence for the possibility of the hailstones size being as big as a size four or five soccer ball? Oh, i'm so glad someone asked And it might not unless you've been watching all day long it might not be perfectly obvious But this morning we talked about different instruments or science measuring tools That can let us know what's going on up in the atmosphere And one of the most important things in the atmosphere is humidity another one is pressure But there's also wind speed And wind direction And what we found out in thunderstorms is that the updraft in a thunderstorm Can be much faster than you might expect Over 100 miles per hour straight up. I've even here at ncar been able to see rain Going up Through our plaza our fountain plaza where there's a surprise coming at the end of the day But i've seen rain wind blowing rain straight up and if it's going out over 100 miles per hour That's enough force to keep hailstones In the sky for quite a while charlie estimates charlie knight our ice in the atmosphere specialist says that it Probably took somewhere around 45 minutes For this single hailstone to grow this size bouncing around and he said he doesn't even know what kind of pattern is But getting jostled around in the air corner of like popcorn in a popcorn making machine Now that's one thing is the air blowing up to hold that that Water drop it up there But we need water and we do lots of water and very very cold temperatures at the top of the thunderstorm the temperature can be anywhere from 50 to maybe even 90 degrees below zero at the stop at the top of these thunderstorms So if you keep pushing water up there The the heaviest we'll get we estimate and mathematically we can do it. That's our job is to figure out. What are the extremes? So we use lots and lots of math and experiments and experience In order to determine what is the absolute top end of what could happen and we may be wrong but um Over time we keep refining our answers and we think it's still somewhere around the basketball or soccer ball in size And hopefully that helps with the answer Wow, that's fascinating Okay, that makes me want to take them into my popcorn And make it into a great big popcorn ball Three of us should eat it at the same time maybe four goodness Tim and Nancy this this has been both informative and delicious this little session So thank you so much to both of you and I did put again In the chat the link to a folder that has all of chef Nancy's recipes for our cooking up the storm series So hopefully some of you will will be inspired to get into the kitchen and and think about some science while you're making some delicious snacks So I don't see any other questions So, um, I think we'll go ahead and wrap it up and we will be back At two o'clock for a special behind the scenes tour of our research aviation facility I don't know how many of you out there in the audience even knew that ncar actually has aircraft airplanes that are specially designed for doing atmospheric research So we'll be back in a few minutes and uh be ready to take you on a tour of that Sounds excellent. Thanks, Tiffany. Thanks everybody Thanks. See you next time