Monday 11 July 2016

Hail damage

It is summer, summer in Alberta and probability of summer thunderstorm is pretty high, but is is possibility that one of these "severe" storms" will bring hail with it.  That was the reality on Saturday for us.
Dark clouds came with roars of thunder and lightening, next came rain, getting heavier and changing into hail.  Hail went on for at least 2-3 minutes, it was not big in size ( perhaps due to efforts of hail suppression program -info below) but big enough and duration that resulted in some damage to veggies in our garden (see pictures below).  Here in Alberta we have a hail suppression program that is financed by insurance industry and its mandate is to reduce hail damage.  We had some significant hail in the past that resulted in very high damage and insurance companies decided to run  suppression program.  The program works as follows.  When a significant storm clouds are detested and their intended direction pints toward more densely populated areas (cities), plain(s) are dispatched and they spread some form of silver iodide (or similar compound) that inhibits formation of rain and potentially of hail, but much smaller in size and softer.  In fact, one can observe reading from their Doppler radar and activity of both storm and cloud seeding aircrafts (here is link for curios http://www.wmiradar.com/alberta/latest_loop.gif).  It is animated picture loop but provides pretty good information.
One of my friend ask me why I keep tunnels covered during summer, well, this is the reason to protect some of the crops from hail damage.

Garden photo update (after the storm)


 Rhubarb suffered a bit of damage as well.


 Potato leaves were almost decimated (at least showed a lot of damage due to density)

 On the positive note, I am getting pretty good size tomatoes.

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