In Alberta’s ‘Hailstorm Alley,’ scientists-turned-storm-chasers look into the eye of the storm for answers

Nearly every summer now, residents of Alberta and the Prairies are confronted by a costly, extreme weather event that damages homes, dents cars and devastates crops: hail.

But researchers from Western University’s Canadian Severe Storms Laboratory are hoping to improve Canada’s understanding of hailstorms by collecting data in central Alberta for their Northern Hail Project.

“Hailstorm Alley,” a region stretching from central to southern Alberta, experiences multiple hailstorms each year – storms that caused billions of dollars in damage in the record-setting seasons of 2020 and 2024. Since 2022, the region has been the summer home to Western students and scientists-turned-storm-chasers.

It starts with studying the forecast. When cumulonimbus clouds – towering clouds that from the ground look dense and ominous – take shape, research team members pile into cars in search of hail.

Jack Hamilton checks a Northern Hail Project “super site” monitoring station in Sundre, Alta. The sites contain a variety of instrumentation to document hail, including a panel that measures the weight and velocity of hail stones.

During one of the team’s “missions” on July 2, Jack Hamilton confirms the presence of severe hail in the storm brewing outside of Drayton Valley, Alta. using the latest Environment Canada radar update.

From the passenger seat, one person tracks the storm’s movement on radar, while another navigates the criss-crossing Prairie roads to position the team safely behind the hail swath, which is the storm’s footprint. Often, there’s a third researcher observing the hail stones from the back seat.

This summer’s team has completed 19 “missions” so far. Storm-chasing requires focus but is an exciting job, said project field co-ordinator Jack Hamilton in a recent interview.

“There are a lot of highs and lows,” Mr. Hamilton said. “We sometimes miss out on the storm that we want to be on. Sometimes we get surprised by the hail size or the intensity of the storm.”

Every storm is different, making the hail events exciting for students but difficult for meteorologists. Current modelling isn’t great at predicting the degree of property damage or the risk of injury posed by individual hail events.

After tracking the storm on radar, the research team reaches the Drayton Valley area in time to see a tornado touch down.

After the tornado near Drayton Valley subsides, Jack Hamilton’s team convenes with another NHP vehicle crew in the region chasing the same storm. Areez Habib uses a drone to survey damage to trees near the touchdown site.

“One of the things we’re doing is looking at creating a hail climatology for Canada,” the project’s director, Julian Brimelow, said. “We don’t really have anything reliable like that across Canada right now, which is a problem for municipalities and people wanting to assess risk.”

Hail forms when moist air rises quickly to cooler heights inside of brewing storms. The foothills of Alberta and the Prairies in the summer form the perfect conditions for long-lived supercell thunderstorms. With powerful updrafts, these storms can produce both hail and tornadoes.

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Small hail stones fall onto the roof of the research vehicle, which is reinforced with an armoured coating designed to protect the body from the impact.

As the atmosphere warms, its ability to hold moisture increases, creating the conditions for more frequent hailstorms, according to Mr. Brimelow, who has chased storms for three decades.

“We get a lot of ping-pong-ball to golf-ball-sized hail with the most severe storms,” Mr. Brimelow said. “Summer on the Prairies will get baseball, even softball-sized hail in the right conditions, and those can be fatal to humans.”

In Alberta, golf-ball-sized hail stones can reach speeds over 100 kilometres an hour before hitting the ground. The team has a running wager for whoever finds the summer’s largest hail stone. Three years ago, as the project was being launched, that summer’s cohort of researchers found Canada’s largest hailstone on record, a whopping 12.3 centimetres in diameter and weighing almost 300 grams.

Jack Hamilton collects hail immediately following a severe storm and tornado outside of Drayton Valley, Alta.

The hail met the minimum requirements for collection, so the team set about gathering up as much as they could. The samples will join the more than 50 bags of hail stones collected by the Northern Hail Project team since May.

The team measures the size of the hail swath, and individual hail stones, which they collect and preserve in refrigerated containers. Data collected by the team automatically uploads to their database, feeding models they hope will enable meteorologists to more accurately predict the impact of hailstorms.

Much of current hail research is done by studying radar data and using other technology, as well as relying on community reports from weather events, rather than on-the-ground scientists who look for the truth at the centre of a storm, Mr. Brimelow said.

“Nothing beats ground truthing,” he said.

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At the end of the research outing, Jack Hamilton and Mark Gartner share a laugh and eat a “Tornado Steak,” a tradition for storm chasers across the world – when a team successfully intercepts and witnesses a tornado, a celebratory steak dinner is to follow.

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