Hail Cannon : These don't actually work - DO they?

[Darren Addy]

Hail cannons are supposed to break up the formation of hail (and don't claim to break up already-formed hailstones). Is there any evidence that they work? It seems a little silly to me. It seems silly to me to think that sound, even if it could disrupt the formation of hail, could not actually penetrate (without being blown away) to the heart of a meso. It's sound, so it would be affected by the winds. One thing is for sure, they do annoy the neighbors!

Cannons both hailed and blasted

Complaint set for court (wonder how that came out?)

How hail cannons work (by a New Zealand manufacturer)

The Wikipedia article quotes Charles Knight, a cloud physicist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado says, "I don't find anyone in the scientific community who would validate hail cannons, but there are believers in all sorts of things. It would be very hard to prove they don't work, weather being as unpredictable as it is."

I suppose that means that it is impossible to have a "control" supercell, as well as one that is being hit with the hail cannon.

See also: History Repeated: The Forgotten Hail Cannons of Europe (8 page pdf) Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Volume 62, Issue 3 (March 1981)

 

[Dan Robinson]

Hail cannons are on the same scam level as lightning dissipation arrays - they defy common sense and any scientific reasoning. They are the 'miracle diet pills' of weather. It's just too bad that companies still peddle and customers actually still spend big bucks on junk science like this.