On the possibility of corona initiation at the surface of a liquid layer nonlinearly oscillating on the surface of a charged hailstone placed in a uniform electrostatic field

An expression for the electric field strength near a watered hailstone is derived in an approximation quadratic in the amplitude of capillary oscillations of a charged conducting liquid layer covering the hailstone. As the number of the mode governing the initial deformation of the equilibrium spherical free surface of the liquid layer increases and its thickness decreases, the electric field strength in the neighborhood of the capillary wave crests rises. Even in the case of small charges and low electric fields, the electric field near the hailstone is high enough to initiate a corona.