Severe storm leaves city looking like middle of winter on 86-degree spring day

An intense thunderstorm pounded Tarija, Bolivia, on Sunday, Oct. 31, with heavy hail, leaving the city looking like it was just hit by a major snowstorm, rather than a springtime thunderstorm. Tarija is situated in the southern part of the country, about 540 miles south of La Paz, one of Bolivia's two capital cities.

Photos and videos captured in various parts of the city showed rivers of water and hail flowing down streets and residents shoveling hail away from stranded vehicles, much the same way one would do with snow.

Weather observations from the city show that a thunderstorm began around the middle of the afternoon on Sunday. Thunderstorms continued off and on into the evening hours.

The scenes left by the storms evoked images of midwinter, even though the Southern Hemisphere is about six weeks into spring. The high temperature in Tarija topped out at 86 degrees Fahrenheit on Oct. 31, and the low was 59.

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Hail forms in a thunderstorm as water droplets freeze into ice. As more water freezes onto a hailstone, it becomes larger as it rises and falls in the turbulent storm clouds before eventually falling to the ground.

Tarija sits at an elevation near 6,000 feet, which makes the city susceptible to such storms.

"Higher elevations tend to have larger hailstorms because they are closer to the freezing level than a lower elevation would be," said AccuWeather Meteorologist Tony Zartman.

Since air typically cools as altitude increases, higher elevations tend to be cooler than lower elevations. However, at this time of year, the average high temperature in Tarija is about 80 degrees.

The surrounding mountains can often act as a focal point for thunderstorm development as storms form around the city on nearly a daily basis.

"While hail is often observed in thunderstorms, it is rare for so much hail to fall in a given area all at once," added Zartman.

Thunderstorms are likely to continue developing in and around Tarija during the next few days, though another storm of this magnitude is not expected. And the AccuWeather forecast calls for temperatures to reach 90 before a substantial, albeit brief, cooldown.

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