Hail is a form of precipitation, which occurs during thunderstorms –and continuing our Severe Summer Weather Awareness Week Coverage, we’re taking a look at the impact of hail.
“Hail needs to be in a thunderstorm, and that’s generally summertime here in North Dakota — like May to September,” explained Chief Meteorologist, Tom Schrader. “I mean, it can happen other times, but that’s generally the biggest time. What happens is you get a great, big tall thunderstorm cloud and there’s a big updraft in it. And when it tries to rain, the wind and that updraft blows it up into the freezing air, and it freezes. It becomes a tiny little pellet, it falls. The wind blows it back up, and that pellet gets a little bit bigger. It keeps going up and down, up and down, up and down in the cloud, until it’s so big that gravity takes over — and it falls and then that’s hail.”
Hail can be as small as a pea, or as big as a grapefruit. That’s why Tom says the public is encouraged to send in photos and videos of hail.
“We may be looking at the hail and thinking, ‘Hey we have quarter-size hail here, but it might be the size of golfballs.’ That’s a big difference when it comes to damage,” he continued. “And when you get hail and real strong wind, those are the kind of storms that like to blow the siding out of houses, knock in windows, and break car windows. And that happens here in North Dakota.”
But be warned — hail can cause damage to your home, your vehicle, and even your crops.
“Hail can be devastating,” stated NDSU Extension Forage Crops Specialist, James Rogers. “So it can range depending upon the crop, depending upon the stage of development of that crop, the intensity of the hail, how long it lasts, and the size of the hail. It can damage anywhere from very light, 10% or less, all the way up to complete crop loss.”
That’s why producers are encouraged to get crop-hail insurance to protect their farming livelihood. In fact, according to the National Crop Insurance Services, in 2021, crop insurance protected 24.1 million acres. and provided $7.4 billion in liability protection in North Dakota.
“That’s absolutely the best thing they can do,” stated Rogers, “is get crop insurance for hail. It does occur here in North Dakota. The peak months for hail are June and July. I looked back on the 2022 data, and we had like 130 occurrences of hail across the state during those two months.”
Rogers says hail can even impact your livestock by damaging forage crops, which can lead to grazing losses. Hail can also fall and hurt the animals — so if a storm has hail potential, you need to be prepared.
Source - https://www.kxnet.com
