<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"It's not just the U.S. that has suffered a damaging onslaught of massive, wind-driven hails lately. On Sunday and Monday, powerful thunderstorms erupted across France and Belgium, dropping baseball to tennis-ball-sized hail near Brussels as well as the French countryside. Hail also fell in Paris overnight Sunday. These hailstones formed inside massive supercell thunderstorms, which are long-lived storms that feature rotating updrafts, which allows them to produce large hail, damaging winds, and in some cases, tornadoes.\nWhile thunderstorms are typical in France during the summer, this storm outbreak has produced unusually large hail for the region, and it has hit Paris particularly hard.\nSee also: Come Hail or High Water: After Midwest Storms, Atmosphere Reloads for More\nAs of Monday evening in France, Meteo France had posted an \"Orange Alert\" across west-central and northern parts of the country, with the threat of severe weather stretching northeastward into Belgium and the Netherlands. Meteo France is urging people to take \"special vigilance\" as the country faces yet another stormy night.\nThe storms can clearly be seen from space via a NASA satellite.\n\nVisible satellite photo centered on France, showing bright white clusters of thunderstorms across northwest France and Belgium.The storm outbreak began on June 7, when a pre-World Cup soccer match between Belgium and Tunisia was halted in the first half due to accumulating golf ball-sized hail.\nNumerous hail and lightning images and videos were shared via social media during the past few days.\n\nPost by FB Newswire.\n\n\nV unusual France hail RT @severeweatherEU MONSTER HAIL from Loiret France an hour ago-8-10cm diameter!! pic.twitter.com/Q0B5y4OhiT HT @afreedma\n\u2014 Kelly Hereid (@KellyHereid) June 9, 2014\n\n\u00A0\n\nWe're accustomed to avoiding thunderstorms on the way to JNB...but not normally during the climb, north of Paris! pic.twitter.com/MP7Zshs8Rw\n\u2014 Rhys Parker (@rhys_parker) June 9, 2014\n\n\u00A0\n\nCurrent view of the monster supercell over Paris, France! @reedtimmerTVN https://t.co/WPHGOdo27j pic.twitter.com/1OLx2qRzw7\n\u2014 severe-weather.EU (@severeweatherEU) June 8, 2014\n\n\u00A0\nThe severe thunderstorms have been forming along the edge of an area of high pressure that has brought an early season heat wave to much of western Europe, with high temperatures in the low-to-mid-90s Fahrenheit in Germany, for example.\n      window._msla=window.loadScriptAsync||function(src,id){if(document.getElementById(id))return;var js=document.createElement('script');js.id=id;js.src=src;document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0].parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);};\n_msla(\"//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#appId=116628718381794&amp;xfbml=1&amp;status=1&amp;cookie=1\",\"facebook_jssdk\");_msla(\"//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\",\"twitter_jssdk\");"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2014/06/09/hail-paris-europe-storms/>