Hail Banger, Inc., Manufacturer of Weather Weapons

[Argo Nimbus]

I read the following article in the Omaha World Herald last week:


Hail cannon fired during severe storm (http://www.msnbc.com/local/khas/M290665.asp)

Minden, Nebraska, May 5 - A Minden greenhouse fired up a high-tech cannon designed to break up hail Sunday. The hail cannon is designed to protect the large glass structure from hail damage.


[Edited to add: the link is to a slightly different story than the one which appeared in the Omaha World Herald.]

No luck on finding the manufacturer of this particular cannon, but I did find an article which mentions Hail Banger, Inc., and Hail Shield, Inc. (http://www.hailshield.com/en-section.html)


Canadian Farm Manager, September '99 article: Risk Management (http://www.cfbmc.com/cfm-eng/sept99/Page_3/page_3.html)

To be effective, the system must be started 15 to 30 minutes before a hail storm arrives. The explosive force creates a vacuum, and as air rushes in, the barrel directs an ionized, supersonic shock wave upwards as high as 50,000 feet, disrupting hail formation in the clouds. As shots are fired every five to six seconds, shock waves spread to cover one kilometre in diameter above the generator, protecting up to 200 acres.

Stevens purchased his $50,000 weather weapon from Hail Banger Inc. in Deerfield, Michigan, the first such installation in Ontario.


Sounds like a scam to me. :rolleyes:

--- Argo

[arcticpenguin]

This shock wave travels up to 50 000 feet? One kilometer in diameter? I have a hard time believing that. I also wonder whether the FAA is aware of this, they might want to examine their traffic lanes for jet liners.

Also, if it did anything like that, it should be loud as heck. I'll bet the neighbors love it.

[arcticpenguin]

From the last article:
After being "hailed" four times in the past 21 years, Charles Stevens of Wilmot Orchards in Newcastle, Ontario, east of Toronto, decided to bring in the heavy artillery to protect his investment.
...
Stevens has used his hail cannon five times this year and hasn't been hit by hail yet.

This is the kind of story that needs long term followup.

[Blue Monk]

Originally posted by arcticpenguin
This shock wave travels up to 50 000 feet? One kilometer in diameter? I have a hard time believing that. I also wonder whether the FAA is aware of this, they might want to examine their traffic lanes for jet liners.

Also, if it did anything like that, it should be loud as heck. I'll bet the neighbors love it.

That's the first thing I thought also.

Smells fishy as hell to me.

[Argo Nimbus]

Originally posted by arcticpenguin
Also, if it did anything like that, it should be loud as heck. I'll bet the neighbors love it.

According to the first article (as it was printed in the Omaha World Herald), the cannon at Minden ran for about an hour one afternoon and for about 30 minutes later that night with blasts every 5 seconds. The Minden police chief compared the noise to a "fireworks display" and said that he had received three complaints. The article doesn't say how close the plant is to the nearest residential neighborhood.

--- Argo

[arcticpenguin]

There's a sidebar here (http://www.gov.nf.ca/agric/cfm/Sept/riskmgnt.htm) that says Of Ontario's 24000 acres of orchard, an average of 1000 acres is hit by hail but in 1998, 6000 acres were damaged

Assuming the distribution is even (no substantiation) that means 1/24 of Ontario's orchards are hit per year.

1) It seems incredibly unfortunate that this guy was hit 4 times in 21 years.

2) The trial period for judging success would be half a century or so.

[rwguinn]

Originally posted by arcticpenguin
This shock wave travels up to 50 000 feet? One kilometer in diameter? I have a hard time believing that. I also wonder whether the FAA is aware of this, they might want to examine their traffic lanes for jet liners.

Also, if it did anything like that, it should be loud as heck. I'll bet the neighbors love it.
Believe it or not- and I still have trouble with it- the pecan orchards at Roswell, NM (yes, home of "the incident") have been using them for years. Acording to the orchard manager, they have sustained zero hail damage since installation.
They sound a bit like the National Guard is doing artillery practice- as stated elsewhere-like a fireworks show.

Personally, I think the merely attract the mothership, which hovers over the orchard, and the hail bounces off the top.;)
And if you doubt the existence of the mothership, just look at a satellite picture of New Mexico sometime-clouds will cover the state, except for a round hole over----Roswell!:D :D

RW

[Psi Baba]

Bump.

Hail Cannon back in the news:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/09/22/hail.cannon.ap/index.html

"There is no science behind it," said hail expert Griffith Morgan Jr., a retired meteorologist from Westminster, Colorado. "The science that is presented is absolutely bogus. I have no reason to believe this can work."

[gerdbonk]

I think the only thing that would convince that farmer (and Nissan: 1 (http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/25/Autos/nissan_cannons/), 2 (http://www.wlbt.com/Global/story.asp?S=1628848)) these machines are bunk is a hail storm right down that cannon barrel. But arcticpenguin's post about the extremely low probability that a particular orchard will get hit again is correct. These folk will go decades believing the blasts are actually working.

[GreyICE]

This sounds like the purest form of woo to me.

"Hailstones are formed and begin with a piece of dust in the clouds," he explains. "There is a lot of activity going on, and what we do is to de-ionize that activity in the clouds and keep those dust particles from collecting moisture out of the clouds in turn reacting and forming what we know as a hailstone."

Man, who knew we could deionize water with a good speaker system?

I swear I'm going to dump a bucket of salt water on the next person who says 'deionize.'

[neutrino_cannon]

What's the radar return signature of frozen water? I wanna active protection system with a really, really high rate of fire that shoots down individual hailstones.

[Giggywig]

What's the radar return signature of frozen water? I wanna active protection system with a really, really high rate of fire that shoots down individual hailstones.

Wouldn't that lead to a problem when your projectiles rain down on your neighbor?

[Hellbound]

Wouldn't that lead to a problem when your projectiles rain down on your neighbor?

Nah. You just need to make sure the muzzle velocity is > escape velocity for the Earth.

Of course, this might cause problems for satellites and shuttles...

:)

[neutrino_cannon]

Wouldn't that lead to a problem when your projectiles rain down on your neighbor?

Yes, but what part of "somebody else's problem" is so difficult to understand?