Why Does it Only Hail When it’s Warm But Sleets in Winter?

Friday night's storms here in Northwest Louisiana were some of the nastiest I've ever experienced.  Granted, I've never had to hide under a mattress in the bathroom of my house while I waited to see if we'd take a direct hit from a tornado, but the hail that hit my house was absolutely unbelievable.

While not the biggest hailstones I've ever seen in pictures, this stuff was huge! I've likened it to a racquetball. A little larger than a golf ball, yet a little smaller than a baseball. And there were two waves of it that just blazed a trail from Oil City all the way through Blanchard, Benton and Haughton.

It literally looked like a nuclear explosion had occurred right in my own front yard. And now forecasters are saying we might see another round or two of this tomorrow. Certainly not what Jake from State Farm and all the other adusters are wanting to hear at this time. But Mother Nature can flex her muscles whenever she wants, and there's nothing we can do about it.

But it got me to thinking. Why does it only hail in the warm months? Why not in the winter? And I've learned it's actually a pretty understandable phenomenon.  Check out the explanation and the answers to several other weather questions you might have had below.