Destructive hailstorms could be predicted weeks ahead of time
Ruinous for cars, homes and especially crops, hailstorms are the USA’s most economically destructive hazard that comes from severe thunderstorms, usually even worse than tornadoes.
During the past few years, hail led to about $10 billion a year in economic damage, according to reinsurance company Aon Benfield.
A new study found these weather disasters could be predicted as much as three weeks in advance by checking wind patterns thousands of miles away.
Researchers found a strong relationship between jet-stream patterns over the Pacific Ocean and the frequency of hail in the USA, study lead author Victor Gensini of Northern Illinois University said.
“In simple terms, when the jet stream is really wavy, the likelihood of experiencing hail greatly increases,” he said.
Jet streams are the rivers of fastmoving air high in the atmosphere — above about 20,000 feet — that steer and guide storms.
The study reviewed nearly 40 years of data and found that a wavy jet stream over the Pacific was a good predictor of major hailstorms two to three weeks later in the USA.
Gensini and co-author John Allen of Central Michigan University said those links were most pronounced during the spring and fall, less so in the summer.
The study was accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Though the new method could help forecast hail for the nation overall, portions of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee, Illinois and Indiana are most vulnerable to the phenomenon.
Such long-range forecasts could be useful for insurance companies and emergency managers and allow homeowners and businesses to prepare, meteorologist Steve Bowen of Aon Benfield said.
In the past three years, the major metropolitan areas of Dallas, San Antonio, Denver and Minneapolis/St. Paul have been struck by billion-dollar hail disasters, he said.
“We’ve seen major hail events happen before, and we’ll certainly see similar events happen again in the future. Hail swaths can also do real damage to crops, too,” Bowen said.
The hail study continued similar research started by Gensini two years ago on long-range tornado predictions.