NHP participates in new collaboration to better understand hail

NHP and UMS

The hail data collection platforms were built by Western's University Machine Services. Pictured l-to-r: Ian Vinkenvleugel, UMS Project Manager; Jack Hamilton, NHP Field Coordinator; Simon Eng, NHP Research Meteorologist (Jacob Arts/Western Engineering)

Hail continues to be an increasingly costly problem, with escalating damage and losses every year. Canada had its first billion-dollar hailstorm in 2020, and in 2022 the largest hailstone on record in Canada was found in Alberta (292.7 grams).

That hailstone was collected by Western University’s Northern Hail Project and they are now participating in a first-of-its-kind collaboration to better understand hail and how it operates in extreme weather conditions.

ICECHIP, or the In-situ Collaborative Experiment for the Collection of Hail in the Plains, will be deployed in the United States’ Front Range and Central Plains to improve radar-based hail detection, hail models and forecasting, and hail warnings derived from those models.

As part of the ICECHIP collaboration, Northern Hail Project (NHP) partnered with Western’s University Machine Services to design and build four specialized data collection platforms that collect and preserve hailstones, while also taking high-speed video of falling hail and measuring the fall speed of hail using a small radar.

Additionally, the NHP is sending four students to participate in the ICECHIP program for three weeks. They will be deploying instruments and collecting data during scientific missions as the convoy roams the high plains in search of hailstorms.

“We are excited to take part in this amazing opportunity with colleagues from around the world," says Julian Brimelow, adjunct professor in civil and environmental engineering and director of the NHP. "It has been over 45 years since there was last a dedicated field program to study hail in the US.”

NHP is a research spinoff of the Northern Tornadoes Project, which was founded in 2017 with support from social impact fund ImpactWX, and is now a part of Western’s Canadian Severe Storms Laboratory.