It's not just the U.S. that has suffered a damaging onslaught of massive, wind-driven hails lately. On Sunday and Monday, powerful thunderstorms erupted across France and Belgium, dropping baseball to tennis-ball-sized hail near Brussels as well as the French countryside. Hail also fell in Paris overnight Sunday. These hailstones formed inside massive supercell thunderstorms, which are long-lived storms that feature rotating updrafts, which allows them to produce large hail, damaging winds, and in some cases, tornadoes.
While thunderstorms are typical in France during the summer, this storm outbreak has produced unusually large hail for the region, and it has hit Paris particularly hard.
As of Monday evening in France, Meteo France had posted an "Orange Alert" across west-central and northern parts of the country, with the threat of severe weather stretching northeastward into Belgium and the Netherlands. Meteo France is urging people to take "special vigilance" as the country faces yet another stormy night.
The storms can clearly be seen from space via a NASA satellite.
The storm outbreak began on June 7, when a pre-World Cup soccer match between Belgium and Tunisia was halted in the first half due to accumulating golf ball-sized hail.
Numerous hail and lightning images and videos were shared via social media during the past few days.
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V unusual France hail RT @severeweatherEU MONSTER HAIL from Loiret France an hour ago-8-10cm diameter!! pic.twitter.com/Q0B5y4OhiT HT @afreedma
— Kelly Hereid (@KellyHereid) June 9, 2014
We're accustomed to avoiding thunderstorms on the way to JNB...but not normally during the climb, north of Paris! pic.twitter.com/MP7Zshs8Rw
— Rhys Parker (@rhys_parker) June 9, 2014
Current view of the monster supercell over Paris, France! @reedtimmerTVN https://t.co/WPHGOdo27j pic.twitter.com/1OLx2qRzw7
— severe-weather.EU (@severeweatherEU) June 8, 2014