Rhythmic thunder? (Hail cannons)


Written on April 1, 2007 – 11:37 pm | by Ed Warkentin



Recently, we heard what sounded like very strange thunder during a rainstorm.
It didn’t sound like ordinary thunder because it was so rhythmic. After reading this article and hearing this story on NPR, I discovered several things:

  1. It wasn’t thunder. It was a “hail cannon”.
  2. The “peals” likely were about 4 seconds apart.
  3. The idea is to shoot up a very loud boom of sound into the storm clouds when they are passing over to prevent hail from forming. This is done so that crops aren’t damaged.
  4. This is quite new, and not proven scientifically, but with the unpredictability of the weather, it’s going to be very hard to say conclusively whether it works or not.

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