Joshua Soderholm’s photograph is the 2027 Australian Weather Calendar’s cover photo
At first glance, Joshua Soderholm’s photograph looks more like a piece of abstract art than a hailstone.
But when the bureau scientist sliced open the hailstone in a sub-zero Brisbane freezer, he knew he was looking at something extraordinary.
For Joshua, the intricate cross-section reveals the life story of a hailstone, capturing its journey through a powerful thunderstorm layer by layer.
Based in Melbourne and working with the bureau’s radar science team, Joshua also holds an honorary position with the University of Queensland, where he helps study hailstones collected after major storms.
Joshua’s photograph features a hailstone collected during Brisbane’s Halloween 2020 storm, the same event that produced the largest measured hailstone on record in south-east Queensland.
Researchers worked with members of the public to recover hailstones from across the city, creating a valuable collection for scientific study.
To cut the stones, Joshua worked in a sub-zero freezer, carefully slicing open the hailstone to reveal its internal structure before photographing it under carefully positioned lighting.
The process required patience and precision.
“If you make a mistake, you don’t get another chance,” Joshua said.
What made this specimen especially memorable was the intricate crystal structure near its centre.
“We haven’t seen that so clearly before,” he said.
For researchers, each layer within the hailstone provides clues about the conditions it encountered as it grew within the storm cloud.
The image allows scientists to trace different stages of the hailstone’s development, from a tiny ice particle at its core to the large, complex hailstone eventually collected on the ground.
“The bigger the hailstones get, the more complex they get inside them.
“When you first look at them, there are things you can see that are almost impossible to explain,” Joshua said.
The research is helping scientists better understand how large hailstones form, improving the way they are represented in weather and climate models.
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