High-Res Truck Targets Hail in Texas and Oklahoma

There's a new way for researchers to study hail and it's pretty high tech. It's been difficult to get a lot of information from hailstones found on the ground after a storm passes by. Usually there's an unknown amount of time that has passed since it fell, or someone picked it up and caused parts of it to melt into a weird shape. Now all those interference issues can be avoided.

NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory has created a new way to carry out hail research. It's called the Hail Camera and it allows hail to be photographed as it's falling. It not only takes high resolution, 4K pictures at 330 frames per second, but it's actually a set of cameras which also allows for speed and size measurements as well.

How can cameras measure hail so accurately?

The truck is also equipped with LED lights that are 30% brighter than the sun. It takes that kind of brightness to be able to photograph hailstones as they fall. Protective eyewear must be worn when looking at the LED lights.  The high speed cameras allow for frame by frame study of hail before it reaches the ground, allowing for speed and direction information to be calculated. Researchers were able to calibrate the measurements using baseballs and softballs. They not only can make sure the cameras measure the correct size, but also speed. Pitchers from the University of Oklahoma baseball and softball teams were measured throwing balls to make sure that the cameras were able to calculate speed of hailstones falling. All of these instruments are protected in bullet-resistant polycarbonate.

Researchers can study how hail shatters as it impacts the bed of the truck, or if it doesn't break at all. They can even see when some of the hail is melting as it falls. All of this data will help protect the public from hail in better ways, once some more data is collected. NSSL researchers want to better understand hail behavior to create better warnings and information that will lead to better infrastructure to resist hail damage.