Hail Research
This 1973 film provides an overview of the National Hail Research Project (NHRE), a collaborative multi-year field project conducted in the area of the Great Plains known as "Hail Alley." The film contains commentary from William C. Swinbank, Director of the NHRE, and Clifton C. Lovell, statistician with the NHRE. Credits: Produced in cooperation with NCAR. Presented by the National Science Foundation, Directorate for Research Applications. Produced by Audio Productions. (Color, sound.)
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- Film Transcript (43.97 KB)
1969 Hail Research Brochure. This 1969 brochure details the significance of hail research, particularly for farmers, and highlights several hail research endeavors at the time, including the Joint Hail Research Project. Hail can be catastrophic for crops and can also cause expensive property damage. NCAR participated in this project which studied hail formation as well as a hail suppression technique in Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado.
Hail Brochure
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National Hail Research Experiment (NHRE) Digital Collection
Description
Browse more records related to NHRE here. This collection of records from the experiment includes newsletters and daily radio reports. These were produced in order to create transparency with the local community--particularly the farmers--around Grover, Colorado so that they would be aware of the project activities which included operating large radar facilities as well as regular aircraft flights in the area.
Hail Research Gallery
Sonia Navia Gitlin developed this calorimeter to measure liquid water content in fresh hailstones in the field. This allowed for more accurate measurements. Increased interest in hail studies, and particularly hail modification, led to the First National Symposium on Hail Suppression at NCAR in 1965, in which Gitlin was a participant.
Citizen science: a farmer and his son, residents of rural Missouri, collected and froze hailstones in the spring of 1975 for Project DUSTORM, a collaborative project designed to study the impact of airborne dust particles on hail formation and storm intensity.
Student Lynn Bolton (left) and Sonia Gitlin, who was a scientist in the Atmospheric Chemistry and Aeronomy Division, work with samples from Project DUSTORM.