Submitted
With Rimbey-area crops finally in the ground and beginning to grow, and another hail season fast approaching, farmers are hoping speculation 2011 could be an active hail year for Alberta proves to be wrong.
“A lot of farmers have been telling me they’re concerned this could be a big hail year because of the extra moisture we’ve had across the province this spring once all the snow melted and it rained on fields that hadn’t dried out from last year,” says Brian Tainsh, provincial adjusting manager with Agriculture Financial Services Corporation (AFSC), the Crown corporation that administers crop and hail insurance in Alberta on behalf of the provincial and federal governments.
“Experience has shown that when there’s this much moisture around, you can often wind up with a fair bit of hail,” says Tainsh.
Geoff Strong, a meteorologist and adjunct professor at the University of Alberta who studies thunderstorms and hail formation across the province, agrees that increased moisture on the ground increases the risk of hail.
“With the soil moisture we have in many parts of the province, I think we’ll see some fairly active hailstorms throughout the summer,” says Strong, explaining the more saturated the soil becomes, the more humidity that grain crops, soggy fields, and other vegetation release into the air, feeding hail producing thunderstorms.
Moisture along foothills increases risk
Unfortunately, what’s good for crops is also good for hail, says Strong, noting the three key ingredients for hailstorms are soil moisture, surface heating, and a triggering mechanism, such as an approaching weather system or a dry breeze that flows down from the mountains, clashing with moisture over the foothills to trigger a storm.
Alberta gets more hail than anywhere else in Canada, with most hailstorms forming over the foothills, says Strong. With soil moisture high along the foothills in early June — from Drayton Valley down to the U.S. border — that extra moisture could easily produce hailstorms in the coming weeks that move easterly across central, southern and northeastern Alberta, intensifying as they pick up more moisture over the crop zones, explains Strong.
Last year proved that even cool, wet weather can produce large amounts of hail, says Strong, pointing out that temperatures in the low- to mid-20s are enough to bring on the most severe weather.
$164 million in hail damage last year
Hail blanketed much of Alberta last summer with crop damage reported in almost every part of the province, including Ponoka County, because of frequent rain throughout the growing season. AFSC paid out more than $164 million in hail claims.
Don Meindersma farms southeast of Rimbey near Lacombe, growing wheat, barley and canola. He says his fields managed to escape any damage from the hailstorms that rolled through last year, but three years ago his farm was completely hailed out. The very next year, hail destroyed another 50 per cent of his crops.
“I worry about hail every year, especially when you’ve got $30,000 wrapped up in one quarter of land just for input costs,” says Meindersma, explaining that’s why he puts the hail endorsement rider on his crop insurance every year and then adds additional Straight Hail coverage once his crops emerge in June — to ensure he can pay his bills if he’s hailed out.