Hail Banger Inc

[Brian Hurst]

I was just watching the weather channel and they had a special on the Heil Banger.It is a cannon that fires a shockwave upward every 6 seconds before a storm and is suppose to break up the hail in the clouds.I am just wondering if anybody thinks this really works and prevents crops from being destroyed.I wonder how many chasers will have this for 50,000 dollar cannon mounted to the top on there car lol.

 

[Laura Duchesne]

There is one guy out in the country not far from here who owns one. Annoying as "hail", is all I can say. That thing makes sonic booms every few seconds. I really question the validity of this theory but I will be honest, we never had hail when that canon boomed, and when he never fired it, we had hail.

 

[Mike Deep]

I read an AP article about this a few weeks ago. It seems to me you could test it by, you know, firing it in the direction of some ice on the ground and seeing if anything happens, rather than going on some anecdotal evidence that basically amounts to "hail didn't fall when we used it" (Just like several hundred other days out of the year). It's the old B followed A so A must have caused B crap.

Also, it sounds stupid, Wiley E. Coyote stupid.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/09/22/hail.cannon.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest

"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."

It should be illegal, and it is really, due to noise ordinances. In this case he thinks he can get out by arguing the hail cannon is "protected under Vermont's right-to-farm law, which exempts certain agricultural practices from local ordinances."

Personally I would just have it turned 90 degrees--towards his house.

 

[Rob Wadsworth]

I was just watching the weather channel and they had a special on the Heil Banger.It is a cannon that fires a shockwave upward every 6 seconds before a storm and is suppose to break up the hail in the clouds.I am just wondering if anybody thinks this really works and prevents crops from being destroyed.I wonder how many chasers will have this for 50,000 dollar cannon mounted to the top on there car lol.

Hail is banging into itself at a rapid rate in the clouds.
eg "hail roar".
Hail is a compounded layer upon layer - it is pretty strong stuff - and I doubt very much that this wives tale method has any validity - IMHO.
If hail isn't going to bust up when battering against each other at the speed of the updraft; then how is a cannon blast going to change anything?
Do they have any evidence to support this action as any more than just a theory?

When the undertaker was looking for a underground spot for my Mom a couple of years back; the guy used a pair of bent brass rods to locate an empty grave.
It really creeped me out - to say the least.
I don't think that was scientific at all - but they were convinced that it worked.
I'm pretty sure they were just trying to yank my chain - in which case it didn't work.
Needless to say - they lost a lot of credibility in my eyes that day.

I give the cannon as much chance of success as the bent brass rods...

 

[Bart_Comstock]

There is one guy out in the country not far from here who owns one. Annoying as "hail", is all I can say. That thing makes sonic booms every few seconds. I really question the validity of this theory but I will be honest, we never had hail when that canon boomed, and when he never fired it, we had hail.

Would you let that guy know that I have this rock that keeps tigers away and that it is for sell? I have a bunch of them and I will assure you that while I have them deployed around my yard I never once have had a tiger attack!

But in all seriousness I read somewhere these were more popular in California and Australia and that these tings date back into the early 1800's! The cannons is repeatedly fired every 4-6 seconds over the period when the storm is approaching and until it has passed through the area. It is claimed that what would otherwise have fallen as hail stones then falls as slush or rain. It is said to be critical that the machine is running during the approach of the storm in order to affect the developing hail stone. These machines can not alter the form of an already developed solidified hailstone. The shock wave that the machine produces is supposed to prevent and break up hail right at its inception and during its growth. According to one of the manufactures of said devices the protected area for an individual machine of theirs is approximately a 500 meter radius with a lower level of effectiveness as distance from the device increases.

If you ask me this is just a good ol' fasioned form of snake oil stupidity that is still being succesfuly marketed.

 

[Kiel Ortega]

I've always wondered...if these things work, how come thunder doesn't disrupt hail growth? Further how come the collisions between droplets and ice not disrupt the process...I'm sure there's plenty of vibration there.http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/25/Autos/nissan_cannons/
That article says the sound isn't higher than 50 dB. Given it's audible, wouldn't that damper really fast and not go to 50,000 ft? So note to all chasers: just get together and honk your horns...you'll save your windshields! :-D

 

[Chris Nuttall]

I've always wondered...if these things work, how come thunder doesn't disrupt hail growth? Further how come the collisions between droplets and ice not disrupt the process...I'm sure there's plenty of vibration there.http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/25/Autos/nissan_cannons/
That article says the sound isn't higher than 50 dB. Given it's audible, wouldn't that damper really fast and not go to 50,000 ft? So note to all chasers: just get together and honk your horns...you'll save your windshields! :-D

That was exactly what I was going to point out. They "claim" they work, but there hasn't been any evidence shown from a test in a controlled environment. Show me the physics of how this works and prove it in a lab.

But yeah, I'm pretty skeptical, because if a hail cannon is disrupting hail growth, then no thunderstorm should produce hail because thunder is many times louder than a little cannon.

 

[Bart_Comstock]

And when it hails around a cannon the manufactures just claim, "oh no see those stones were already formed and the cannons cant break those apart, only ones that were forming... that is all the rain you see mixed in with the hail."

 

[Greg Campbell]

Interesting article discussing the history of the things:
http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0477/62/3/pdf/i1520-0477-62-3-368.pdf
It seems that hail canons were largely discredited back in the early 1900's!

Consider the path of hail in a storm. If there is any appreciable environmental shear, you're going to have hail falling a fair lateral distance from it's nucleation site. Images of these canon indicate that they are always installed pointing straight up. Even IF (and it's BS, IMO) you could project a sufficiently disruptive shockwave into the air, you'd be missing the nursery, so to speak.

As for disrupting hail formation ... The energy released burning a few ounces of acetylene just ain't gonna make it! Heck, I'd be willing to bet that any honest to god shock wave that might reach cloud level (before decaying into harmless loud 'whump' sound) will be absorbed and disbursed by rain droplets in the updraft, long before it reaches the freezing level.

-Moo!

 

[Matt Sellers]

There's only one really good way to put the "hail-banger" to a test - take that silly contraption to Kansas and set it ahead of a typical Plains baseball hailer, and see how well it does (if it even survives the storm.)

 

[Rob Wadsworth]

I just watched "The Weather Channel" and their report on the 'Hail Banger'.
These 'bangers' fire a volley every six seconds - and aren't nearly as loud as thunder.
These NY farmers (interviewed on TWC) claim that it had stopped the hail from destroying their crops.
The cost of one of these units runs about $40,000 each.
Very expensive snake oil...

I wonder if any of the owners of these devices wil admit that these units have failed them.
Would you want to admit that you made a $40k mistake?
The mfr of this item must have a web site - but I cannot find it.
Has anyone located the mfr website?
Its supposed to be out of Deerfield MI - Name is 'Hail Banger Inc.'

 

[Steven Williams]

Website here of a manufacturer in New Zealand who sells these contraptions into the US. http://www.hailcannon.com/index.html

 

[Von Castor]

There is already scientific proof that shock waves break up stones. This quote is off the MD website, "Extracorporeal Shock Wave Lithotripsy (ESWL)

ESWL focuses high-energy shock waves from a source outside the body and uses this energy to crush the stone into tiny pieces. These pieces are then small enough to pass out of the body during urination.

Shock waves created by high-voltage discharges are focused on the kidney with the stone.
The waves are transmitted through water. This is done either by placing the person's lower body in a tank of water or by positioning a water-filled cushion between the person and the source of shock waves.
These shock waves do not damage the surrounding portions of the body.
Most stones are reduced to a powdery substance following multiple shock-wave discharges."
Now, if this can work in the human body, granted it is on a much smaller scale, why can't it be magnified to fit ag purposes?
I don't know if these are the same type of waves either. Maybe one of our more learned members can enlighten us on the different types of waves.

 

[Mike Deep]

There is already scientific proof that shock waves break up stones. This quote is off the MD website, "Extracorporeal Shock Wave Lithotripsy (ESWL)

ESWL focuses high-energy shock waves from a source outside the body and uses this energy to crush the stone into tiny pieces. These pieces are then small enough to pass out of the body during urination.

Shock waves created by high-voltage discharges are focused on the kidney with the stone.
The waves are transmitted through water. This is done either by placing the person's lower body in a tank of water or by positioning a water-filled cushion between the person and the source of shock waves.
These shock waves do not damage the surrounding portions of the body.
Most stones are reduced to a powdery substance following multiple shock-wave discharges."
Now, if this can work in the human body, granted it is on a much smaller scale, why can't it be magnified to fit ag purposes?
I don't know if these are the same type of waves either. Maybe one of our more learned members can enlighten us on the different types of waves.

The issue has more to deal with range and energy, which you just can't produce in the necessary amounts (Obviously if you slam a crystalline structure hard enough with waves that resonate, it'll eventually break). It's a bit like the old "Why not nuke hurricanes?" question, the energy you can throw at the system is really infinitesimal compared to the system itself. As has been said, lightning produces more powerful waves than these cannons do, and you can't even aim the cannon.
It's also unclear whether the device even produces the right frequency and amplitude of waves to break up water ice at any range. Like I said, shoot it at some ice on the ground and get back to us.

 

[Sean Mullen]

There is already scientific proof that shock waves break up stones. This quote is off the MD website, "Extracorporeal Shock Wave Lithotripsy (ESWL)

The waves are transmitted through water. This is done either by placing the person's lower body in a tank of water or by positioning a water-filled cushion between the person and the source of shock waves."

Now, if this can work in the human body, granted it is on a much smaller scale, why can't it be magnified to fit ag purposes?
I don't know if these are the same type of waves either. Maybe one of our more learned members can enlighten us on the different types of waves.

These shock waves are transmitted over a short distance to a targeted, stationary stone. Unless you summon up enormous energies, you'd have to target individual stones falling at high speed from the clouds. I think the transmitting medium is more important. Shock waves aren't transmitted as efficiently through air as as they are through water.

Keep the faith
Sean