Farmers Try Hail Cannons
December 27th, 2006
For farmers, the concept is deceptively simple: use a giant cone to aim a powerful blast of air at an approaching storm, where the shockwave will disrupt the formation of hail, thus saving the farmers’ crop. The problem is, after a hundred years of study, no one knows if the $70,000 machines work at all.
Invented in the 18th Century, the modern hail cannon uses an explosive mixture of acetylene and air to produce a blast audible for twelve miles. While farmers from California to Ohio have invested in hail cannons, the meteorological community isn’t sold.
“It’d have to be something pretty major to upset hail,” said Charles Knight, a senior scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a Boulder, Colo.-based nonprofit organization. “If you exploded an atomic bomb in a cloud, that might do something.”
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