Part of: GS Prelims and GS-I – Geography and GS II – Policies and interventions
In news
To help out horticulturists who face crop damage due to hailstorms, the Himachal Pradesh government will be testing the use of indigenously developed ‘anti-hail guns’.
The indigenous guns have been developed by IIT Bombay along with Dr Y S Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry at Nauni (Solan).
About the anti-hail gun
An anti-hail gun is a machine which generates shock waves to disrupt the growth of hailstones in clouds.
It comprises a tall, fixed structure somewhat resembling an inverted tower, several metres high, with a long and narrow cone opening towards the sky.
The gun is “fired” by feeding an explosive mixture of acetylene gas and air into its lower chamber, which releases a shock wave
Shock waves travel faster than the speed of sound, such as those produced by supersonic aircraft).
These shock waves supposedly stop water droplets in clouds from turning into hailstones, so that they fall simply as raindrops.
Important value additions
Hail
Hail is solid precipitation made of balls or irregular lumps of ice, each of which is called a hailstone.
Hailstones consist mostly of water ice and measure between 5 mm and 15 cm in diameter.
Any thunderstorm, which produces hail that reaches the ground, is termed a hailstorm.
Maharashtra is India’s most hailstorm-prone state, according to an IMD analysis of hailstorms across the country between 1981 and 2015.
