Thursday, June 22, 2006

Welcome summer

How did you spend your summer solstice (June 21st)? I spent mine watching a wicked hailstorm. If hailstorms are rare where you live, here's some interesting facts about hail:

Calgary has hailstorms quite often, usually 3-6 major storms per year. The insurance industry used to pay out so much money in claims for damage to houses and cars that they began investing in cloud seeding. When a storm with the potential to produce hail is spotted heading for Calgary, they send a plane up to seed the clouds with silver iodide. This helps reduce the amount and/or size of hail that will rain from these clouds, saving the industry millions of dollars each storm.

The picture isn't suffering from white splotches - those are hailstones.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

We live in s.e. calgary and were hit hard as well. The thunder we heard after the hail was non-stop. It was pretty cool.

btw....Is that the new childrens hospital in the background of your pic?

Cheers
JM

Karl Plesz said...

It sure is.....