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Hail storm in Athens: Short but intense (videos) – POLL

It was short after 2:30 Friday afternoon when a weird, continuous sound coming from nowhere was heard. initially it was a “Toc!” here and a “Toc!” there and within minutes the feeling of being “bombarded” from all sides. A hail storm in Athens and the sound of hail balls knocking on the windows.

In zero seconds the two cats had interrupted their midday nap and rushed to find a shelter from this phenomenon they could not classify. The older and more experienced cat went right under the couch, the younger one first ran up and down not knowing what to do, run to the bedroom and jumped under the bed.

The hail was followed by a strong rainfall. Surprise! The whole “storm” lasted less than ten minutes.

Αs hail is rather rare in Athens and thus in a month like October, social media were flooded with “χαλάζι” -hail – posts, videos and pictures of ice balls resting on hand palms.

The hail fell in districts of Athens, in south, north and east suburbs like Pagrati, Ambelokipoi, Ilissia, Ilioupolis, Vyronas, Palaio Faliro, Marrousi.

The hail fall was dense, the balls had the size of …well…. opinions are diverging.

Hail in Markopoulos, East Attica.

Some claim, hail had the size of walnut, of a ping pong ball or even the size of a gulf ball.


I can assure you that in our neighborhood it had the size of hazelnut. And melted pretty quickly, therefore I did not manage to take any picture.

On the occasion of the conflicting perception of hail, I would like to ask residents and visitors of Athens this:

What was the size of hail in Athens?

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There are reports that the hail caused damages to vehicles as well as to solar water heaters.

The best Tweet on “xalazi” in Athens was, however, this:

“Hail was falling and I opened the balcony door to put something inside, a swallow (apparently seeking shelter) flew into the room, I gave it water, It pooed on my chair twice, and then I let it fly away.”

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