It's hail season.
If you're like me, you're worried about potential damage to your car or other property. However, for those in agriculture, hail clouds can cause massive damage that can impact their entire business.
Undoubtedly, the most effective protection method is physical protection. For a car, that's a garage or a carport. Hail nets have become extremely popular in recent years, especially because they can also be used on farmland.
Additionally, there's always the option of insurance against damage. While this doesn't prevent damage, it can mitigate the financial impact that damage causes.
However, today I want to talk about a protection method that is essentially chemical, or more precisely, physico-chemical. It's clear I'm talking about hail protection based on cloud seeding.
What is this about? At the core of the process, often cited by conspiracy theorists when discussing artificial weather changes, lies a chemical. It's believed that cloud seeding can trigger heavy rainfall, disperse fog, or ensure clear skies for certain events.
Let's take a closer look at this hail protection process.
Cloud seeding involves introducing specific chemical agents into a cloud to accelerate condensation or ice nucleus formation. It's about stimulating or speeding up processes that naturally occur in nature.
Tiny water droplets or ice crystals form in a cloud when atmospheric water vapor cools and condenses around dust or salt particles. These particles in the atmosphere act as condensation or ice nuclei. Without them, rain droplets or snowflakes wouldn't form, and precipitation wouldn't occur. Nor would the water cycle in nature.
The goal of seeding is to increase the number of ice nuclei by adding a chemical agent, which accelerates the formation of more numerous, smaller hailstones. These smaller hailstones can melt before hitting the ground, preventing damage to cars or crops.
The chemical agents used include potassium iodide, dry ice (solid carbon dioxide), and silver iodide, the most commonly used. Silver iodide has a crystal structure similar to ice, making it a suitable condensation nucleus and base for ice formation.
Silver iodide can be dispersed into clouds from the air (by plane or drone) or from the ground. Ground-based treatments use ground generators and anti-hail rockets fired into developing clouds.
It's considered safe for humans and the environment to use silver iodide for these purposes. On the other hand, available data suggest that this substance should be classified as environmentally hazardous and even toxic to reproduction. Chronic effects on both humans and the environment are particularly concerning.
Although this method has been used for many years, it remains quite controversial. Its effectiveness in hail protection is questionable and practically impossible to measure. Some studies suggest this method might even increase hail damage. This is why many countries are abandoning this technique.
This hail protection method is only applied in the Republic of Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina has abandoned this method due to its questionable effectiveness. In our region, hail protection is also present in Serbia, while Croatia has also ceased its application.
What are your thoughts on the hail protection used here? Do you trust the shooters launching anti-hail rockets, or do you prefer physical protection? Write to me at nina.pajovic@bens-consulting.eu.
nina.pajovic@bens-consulting.eu
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