ANTI HAIL GUN
Anti Hail Device is a Hail Cannon providing horticultural protection from hail stone damage, your very own horticultural crop insurance.
How Hail Cannons Work?
The Hail Cannon is a shock wave generator used to disrupt the formation of hailstones in their growing phase. An explosive charge of acetylene gas & air is fired in the lower chamber of the machine. As the resulting energy passes through the neck & into the cone it develops into a force that becomes a shockwave. This shockwave, clearly audible as a large whistling sound, then travels at the speed of sound into & through the cloud formations above, disrupting the growth phase of the hailstones.
The device is repeatedly fired every 4 seconds over the period when the storm is approaching & until it has passed through the area. What would otherwise have fallen as hail stones then falls as slush or rain. It is 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 & therefore solidified hailstone.
Hail Formation
Hail forms in tall clouds as cumulonimbi. Ideal conditions for hail formation are very high clouds with intense updrafts, containing a large quantity of supercooled water (liquid water under 0°C) and with dust particles in the atmosphere.
At the very beginning, a hailstone is a supercooled droplet which freezes by melting with condensation nuclei (as a dust particle). The hailstone nuclei is lifted on the top of the cumulonimbus by the strong updrafts. Once situated on the upper part of the cloud, the hailstone falls down and is lifted again. Each time the hailstone goes through an area with a lot of supercooled water, it grows in size and increases in weight. Once it becomes too heavy, the hailstone is either ejected from the top of the cloud (because of the intertia) or falls from the bottom (because of gravity).
While the History of Hail cannons date back into the 18th century, the modern Hail Cannon has been developed largely over the last 30 years with most development in the latter 10 of those.
The protected area for an individual machine is approximately a 500 meter radius with a lower level of effectiveness as distance from the device increases.