A team of researchers from Western University are in Calgary this week gathering data from the hailstorm that hit the city on Monday.
The Northern Hail Project is the first of its kind to study high-impact hail events. The hope is to better understand the size and intensity of the storm in different areas of the city, to better respond to similar storms in the future.
“We’re going to go back and look at the conditions that produced the storm,” explains Simon Eng with the Northern Hail Project.
“Maybe next time we’ll have a better chance at predicting exactly where it will happen and get a better sense if there’s the potential of something of this intensity.”
Crews are going door to door in the neighbourhoods with the most damage and speaking with homeowners.
They are examining the damage done, collecting data on the severity and asking about the types of siding and windows to better understand the type of materials less prone to damage.
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“That information goes into possibly modifying building codes, the requirements for the types of materials people put on the sides of their houses and the materials they use for roofing,” says Eng.
The group says data to this level of detail is similar to the data collected by the Northern Tornado Project but has never been collected for hailstorms. The research will allow the university to compare the magnitude of storms like Monday’s to other extreme weather events.
“Doing this over several years will also give us a better idea of where do storms of this intensity actually happen across Canada,” says Eng. “So which geographical areas are most prone to these types of storms and where to implement (building code) changes.”
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