KANSAS CITY - Grapefruit and softball sized hail has left its mark from Sunday night and Monday morning storms. Families south of Oak Grove report having to pull off the road to find shelter for their cars while the hail stones hurled. Heavy storms hit south central Kansas and Northern Missouri. No injuries have been reported, but many homeowners report wind and hail damage to homes and trees.
“Assessing the damage comes next,” says Christina Loznicka, Regional Communication Consultant for Allstate Insurance.
Just because you have hail damage, it doesn’t mean your neighbor will, too, although it can be likely. The wind direction and speed, as well as the pitch of a roof and location of car can make all the difference in damage reports.
The National Weather Service says damage from hail approaches $1billion in the US each year. Much of the damage is to crops. Weather experts say even relatively small hail can shred plants to ribbons in a matter of minutes. Vehicles, roofs of buildings and homes, and landscaping are the other things most commonly damaged by hail.
While the damage might not at first be apparent, Loznicka says people should use a critical eye and perhaps a set of binoculars. “Check patio covers, screens, windows and soft aluminum roofs for damage,” says Loznicka. “A pair of binoculars can help assess roof damage.”
Loznicka also recommends checking your trees, shrubs and plants around the house as well as vehicles for dents and broken or cracked glass.
If you find damage, Loznicka says it’s important to first cover any broken windows or holes in the roof to minimize further damage. “Report your insurance claim as soon as possible,” adds Loznicka. “No matter the level of damage, insurance agents need to know the kind of damage so they can adequately respond to customer needs.”
Loznicka says to have your policy numbers handy to help streamline the claim process and make sure to take pictures as you clean up. Loznicka offers one final word as a warning. “Be wary of out-of-town contractors or repair vendors unknown to you. Talk with your insurance company first and ask for references.”
While insurance companies deal with the cost of hail storms, he National Severe Storms Lab continues to study hail storms to guard against them. NSSL focuses their research efforts towards the prediction and detection of hail and hailstorms to give folks enough time to avoid the storm, seek shelter, and protect their property.
It developed a Hail Detection Algorithm that identified a large hail event that pulverized the Dallas-Fort Worth area on May 5, 1995. Hail as large as 3.5 inches (grapefruit-size) was reported, and 109 people attending an outdoor celebration were seriously injured.
Hail HistoryThe largest hailstone recovered in the U.S. fell in Aurora, NE on June 22, 2003 with a diameter of 7 inches and a circumference of 18.75 inches. Since its weight could not be determined, the hailstone that fell on Coffeyville KS in 1970 remains the largest on record at 5.7 inches and 1.67 pounds, with a circumference of 17.5 inches.
Hail has been known to cause injury to humans, and occasionally has been fatal. The most deadly hailstorm on record occurred in India on April 30, 1988, killing 246 people and 1600 domesticated animals.
The 3/4" size limit for hail is based on a 1952 study of the "smallest size of hailstones that cause significant damage at airplane speeds between 200 and 300 mph." Though this was based on DC-3 type aircraft, hail remains a significant hazard to aviation. In 1977, a Southern Airways DC-9 crashed in New Hope, GA after both engines ingested hail and lost thrust. Two of four crew members died as well as 60 of 81 passengers. Eight other people on the ground were also killed when the plane crashed.
What is hail? The National Weather Service describes hail as precipitation that is formed when updrafts in thunderstorms carry raindrops upward into extremely cold areas of the atmosphere and freezes into ice. Hailstones grow by colliding with super cooled water drops. Thunderstorms that have a strong updraft keep lifting the hailstones up to the top of the cloud so they continue to grow. The hail falls when the thunderstorm's updraft can no longer support the weight of the ice. The stronger the updraft, the larger the hailstone can grow.
Doppler radar generally sends a return signal that looks like extremely heavy rainfall when hail is present. Scientists are also working with the use of polarmetric radar which is a radar that sends horizontal and vertical pulses to detect actual ice.
Hail suppression Since World War II scientists have tried many techniques to lessen the damage from hail storms. The most well-known technique involved "seeding" large thunderstorms with silver iodide. The theory was that the resulting small hail would probably melt and therefore not cause any damage. Unfortunately other experiments using this technique were not successful, and hail suppression remains elusive.
Another novel technique to suppress hail was recently installed in a company parking lot by an auto manufacturer trying to protect its inventory of newly painted cars. Under certain thunderstorm conditions detected by the company's own radars, a cannon-like device will send sonic waves up to 50,000 feet in the air to keep hailstones from forming. Now they must wait for a hailstorm to pass over the parking lot to test the device!
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