"Mariah!" Pippa exclaimed from the window. "Come look! Marbles are falling from the sky!"
Mariah came to the window to look. Pippa was right! White balls the size of marbles were falling from the sky.
Whenever one of them hit the house, the dolls could hear a 'plunk' sound. It was raining at the same time. Water was running down the street.
"Does God think we've lost our marbles?" Pippa wanted to know, looking up at Mariah.
"I don't think so, Pippa," Mariah said. "I've seen this before, although not such big ones. It's called hail (HAYL). The little balls are made of ice."
Just then, there was a flash of light.
Both dolls jumped. "Lightning!" Pippa cried. "It can melt your vinyl if it hits you."
Then Pippa and Mariah heard a loud boom. "Thunder," Pippa said, a little more calmly.
Pippa turned to Mariah and said, "Mandy said thunder is the voice of the lightning. It has been a few seconds since the lightning, so it must not be very close."
"Mandy told me all about how light travels faster than sound," Pippa told Mariah solemnly. "That's why we see the lightning before we hear the thunder."
"We're safe in the house," Pippa reassured Mariah then. She was happy she knew something about what was happening, even if she had never heard of hail before.
Mariah knew about thunder and lightning, of course, and wasn't worried, but she was happy to let Pippa reassure her. It was good practice for Pippa.
"What makes the hail, I wonder," Pippa said.
Mariah wondered that, too. "I think," she said, "it has something to do with the wind up in the clouds, but I don't know enough about it to explain it. Let's go ask Mandy."
Pippa thought that was a good idea. She was really interested. By the time the dolls had climbed up the stairs and reached the workroom, the storm was over and the sun was out again. Mandy was on the daybed with the boys, looking out the window.
"We saw a hailstorm!" Pippa gushed her excitement, as she and Mariah came into the room.
"We watched from here," Billy said. "I took some photos with my camera!"
"We heard the hail hitting the window and the roof," Emil added, "so we came to look. We were just asking Mandy what makes hail," he added.
Mandy climbed down from the daybed. She beckoned to the other dolls to follow her. Then she climbed up to the workroom table and opened up the laptop. "Come up here, and I'll show you a photo," she suggested to the other dolls. "It will help me explain it."
As the other dolls gathered around, Mandy typed in something and a picture appeared on the screen. "When there is a thunderstorm," she explained, "you sometimes can have wind that goes upward through the clouds. That wind is called an updraft. Drops of water are carried upward instead of falling as rain. If the temperature in the clouds is below freezing, the drops reach colder air and then freeze."
"They're heavier than the air," Mandy explained, "so they fall if the wind lets up a bit, but there's more to it." (Of course there's more! There's always more if Mandy is involved.) "This is what I wanted to show you," she said, pointing to the screen on the laptop. The dolls all looked at the screen. The image looked like a glass dish.
"This," Mandy explained, "is a cross section of a hailstone. A scientist cut through the middle of it, cutting it in two and then cut through it again, so it was a slice, like a slice of radish or tomato. Now you can see the layers, like the layers of an onion, from the middle to the outer edges. That shows that the piece of ice froze and then went through a place where it was damp or even wet, and that water collected all around the surface. Then it froze, too."
"Scientists are very curious people," Mandy continued. "They wondered about how these layers were made,They used to think that the ball of ice fell and then was lifted again, several times. They thought that falling through a damp part of the cloud and then getting blown upwards where it was freezing was what made the layers."
"Research has given them a new theory (THEE-uh-ree), though," Mandy said. Then she noticed a puzzled look on Pippa's face. "A theory," she explained, "is a possible explanation for how something happens when you know a lot about something but not everything."
Pippa nodded. She had lots of theories about things, she realized.
Some dolls like to think about something for a while, like Pippa. Billy is the kind of doll who just wants to get on with things. "So what's the new theory?" he asked.
"Well," Mandy began, "you know that clouds are made of water, but they're not the same all through. There are parts where the water in them is more liquid and there are parts where the water is more like steam, only cool. It's called vapor (VAY-per). It's like a thick gas."
"According to the new theory," Mandy continued, "the ball of ice goes through areas in the cloud where the water is more liquid and parts of the cloud where the water is more like vapor. When it goes through the wetter part of the cloud, it makes this layer you can see through." Mandy pointed to the part of the photo that looked like clear glass.
"What do you suppose happens," Mandy asked, "when the ball of ice moves through the part of the cloud where the moisture is more like vapor?"
"Is that what makes the cloudy part?" Emil asked, pointing to the part of the photo where the cross section was white.
Mandy nodded, "That's the theory now," she agreed. Scientists are doing experiments to find out.
"The cross section isn't a perfect circle," Billy pointed out. "The hail we saw seemed to be perfectly round.
"They can be perfect balls or not," Mandy told them. "Sometimes they have little rounded spikes all over, and some are in between, with an uneven surface like this one."
"The ones we got were like marbles," Pippa said. "White marbles. That's what I thought they were at first."
"Speaking of marbles," Emil said, "the storm is over now. We can go outside to play!"
"Yes," Mandy agreed, "but first I have to tell you the most important thing to know about hail."
The other dolls all looked at Mandy expectantly.
"If you're outside when hail starts to fall," Mandy said, "run and find shelter as fast as you can. It doesn't happen often, but hailstones can be as big as your head sometimes!"
"My head?" Pippa wanted to know.
"Billy's head," Mandy said, "or mine, or even bigger. Those hailstones can do a lot of damage. They can break windows or put a dent in a car roof. They can squash you flat!"
All the dolls except Mandy tried very hard to make their eyes very large to show how shocking this new information was. (They couldn't do it, of course, because their eyes are what they are, but it made them feel better to try.)
Just then, Charlotte came into the room. "The Writer is going out in the car," she said. She's going to the store to buy a new barbecue cover. She sent me to ask if there's anything we need at the store."
"What's wrong with the old barbecue cover," Mandy asked her.
"Go and look at it out the window," was all Charlotte would say.
The dolls all rushed down the stairs, which is faster than going up. Then they climbed up on the windowsills where they could see the barbecue. It was shocking!
This is what they saw.
"I wonder what hailstones the size of your head would do!" Pippa exclaimed in amazement.
Mariah was speechless.
Mandy: Götz Happy Kidz Katie 2015
Charlotte: Götz Happy Kidz Anna in Paris
Mariah: Götz Happy Kidz Mariah, "Chosen" from My Doll Best Friend
Billy: Götz Happy Kidz Lily at London
Emil: Götz Happy Kidz Emilia
"The Doll's Storybook" is not affiliated with Gotz Dolls USA Inc. or Götz Puppenmanufaktur International GmbH.
Watch for the next story each Friday afternoon at 1:00 PM Pacific Time.
