Ice Chip: Inside the largest extreme hail survey and the lab quest to grow giant snowflakes

New Scientist follows a massive multi university mission, Ice Chip, outside Amarillo, Texas, as meteorologists chase and study extreme hail events. Researchers deploy an array of vehicles, drones, foam hail pads, and impact sensors to map hail swaths, measure sizes, and improve radar warnings. The day escalates to a vivid core of the storm with tornado risk, and the team bags hundreds of hailstones for ground truth. The episode also turns to the lab where snowflake physics are explored in cloud chambers and energy house wind tunnels, attempting to create record breaking snow crystals, illustrating the challenges in ice nucleation and crystal growth. The show features the Husky Hale Hunter and a hail magnet nicknamed Joey, who get up close with the ice inside the storm. The overall takeaway is the rarity and brutality of giant hail and the difficulty of predicting it.

Ice Chip field campaign overview

The video follows New Scientist environment reporter James Deneen as he joins a large, nationwide coalition of meteorologists in the Ice Chip campaign, the largest ever survey of extreme hail. Located just outside Amarillo in the Great Plains, researchers from more than a dozen universities and the National Weather Service are roving the plains for two weeks to identify the storms most capable of producing hail. The mission aims to answer how hail forms, how it reaches the ground, and how radar and forecasting can better warn communities about damaging hail events. A central element is an in situ, multi instrument array that includes ground stations, foam hail pads, impact sensors, and a mobile storm tracking convoy.

Field tools and operations

Key equipment includes the Raven, a 7 ft wingspan drone carrying a simplified meteorological payload to measure 3D winds, pressure, temperature, humidity, and related variables. The campaign uses a moving field station approach: trucks with masts and sensor pods drop in front of storms to act as a moving weather station, collecting data ahead of the hail core. A large number of white vehicles in staging areas represent the many teams involved, all coordinating to deploy sensors before hail cores pass over. Hail pads, made of foam, capture dents and help researchers infer hail size and density, while impact sensors (impact astrometers) record when hail strikes, enabling a time accurate record of hail events during a storm.

Hail data and findings

The teams describe storms that can produce the bulk of hail over 2 inches in diameter, with the wider consequences of hail damage on vehicles, roofing and infrastructure. They discuss economic losses, citing damages exceeding tens of billions of dollars annually in the United States, and explain how urban sprawl and roofing materials impact vulnerability. A highlight is a day when the convoy enters a hail core with a tornado threat, gathering samples that include unusually large stones. Observations note the presence of both large golf ball size stones and much larger specimens, with detailed notes on stone shape and growth history. The data collection culminates in hundreds of hailstones that are bagged and stored for later, lab based analysis of hardness, density, and internal structure. A vivid moment is the discovery of a 149 millimetre hailstone, described by crew as giant, underscoring the potential for exceptionally large hail throws within extreme storms.

Laboratory snow experiments

The narrative shifts to a festive scientific exploration of ice where Maddie Cuff visits a cloud chamber at the University of Manchester. The aim is to replicate atmospheric ice nucleation and investigate whether giant snowflakes can be grown under controlled conditions. The chamber is cooled to a series of carefully tuned temperatures to mimic atmospheric processes, and a vapour source is used to seed ice crystal growth. The team describes the physics of ice nuclei and how impurities in the air influence nucleation, linking the experiment to broader climate and atmospheric science questions. The team tests a so called snow machine in a second facility, Energy House 2.0, which can simulate full scale environmental conditions including wind and solar radiation to better understand how snow crystals form and are shaped by weather conditions on the ground.

Can we make the world’s biggest snowflake

The snow experiments reveal the challenges of making giant snowflakes in the lab. The researchers observe that snow can form into spherical particles when produced by a snow cannon, and they attempt to orchestrate a two cloud system to encourage aggregation into larger flakes. A dramatic moment occurs when their improvisations with a kettle and tarpaulin produce a single snow-like crystal, described as antler horns or seaweed like in appearance, but they conclude that making a record breaking snowflake is extremely unlikely with the current setups. The segment ends with a reflection on the beauty and complexity of natural snow crystals and a Christmas farewell, highlighting the wonder and difficulty of recreating such natural phenomena in laboratory environments.

Conclusion

Across field and lab, the episode emphasizes that hail outbreaks and snow crystals are governed by complex atmospheric dynamics. While Ice Chip advances the understanding of hail formation, nucleation, and ground truthing with real storm data, the snow experiments reveal the practical limits of recreating giant crystals in controlled conditions. The piece ends with a festive note on the science of snow and the enduring curiosity that drives researchers to better predict, prepare for, and appreciate the world of ice crystals and extreme weather.