Farnell Barqué, a researcher at the Meteorological Service of Catalonia in Spain, took an orthodontist friend’s advice: Why not use a CT scanner to reveal the complete internal structure of hailstones?
“The first result was impressive,” said Barqué in an interview with New Scientist. “Wow! We can see the interior of the stone without breaking it. We could see different layers, with different densities.”
Barqué and her colleagues collected 14 hailstones, up to 8.5 centimetres in diameter, after a severe storm hit northeastern Spain in 2022. The storm tragically killed one child, injured dozens, and caused millions of dollars in damage.
To study the growth process, they needed to analyse the hailstones’ shape and internal layers. Traditionally, researchers slice hailstones with a hot knife to examine them. Using the dental scanner offered a new, non-invasive approach.
Inspired by this, Julian Brimelow at the Northern Hail Project in Canada has scanned smaller hailstones this way, thanks to a dentist’s suggestion.
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