Hail suppression hopes to ease the burden of Alberta’s peak storm season 

During July’s peak storm season, it’s almost a daily routine at airports around Calgary.

“We’re concerned about that so we’re calling our aircraft in,” said meteorologist Adam Brainard. “We’re getting them ready to go.”

Brainard works with Weather Modification International. A team that employs 14 pilots on-call 24/7 in Alberta from June through mid-September, specializing in getting ahead of Alberta’s worst storms.

“We know where they are,” said Brainard.  “We know where the storm is. But what they can see with their eyes is extremely important.”

“To see the weather system from the air happening in real time: you see the clouds grow and collapse. It’s amazing,” said pilot Audrey Petit.

“You’ll never get this close to a storm in any other aviation jobs.”

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Depending on the severity, two or even three planes will take to the sky at once.

“There’s definitely a risk to it,” said Petit. “It’s gets pretty bumpy. Rocky.”

The planes are equipped with 48 flares on the wings that burn in-place for four-and-a-half minutes on the wings and then underneath the belly of the plane are 306 more that are dropped right into the storm.

Inside each of the flares is silver iodide mixed with magnesium. The clouds are seeded with it in hopes of speeding up the rain process, ideally before the hail process turns pea-sized particles into grapefruits.

Property owners are well-acquainted with the impact Alberta’s so-called ‘hail alley’ is capable of — as are insurance agencies.

“The insurance industry continues to pay for our project because we can reduce the damage,” said Terry Krauss who acts as a mediator between the insurance industry and the hail suppression team. He provides weekly reports highlighting WMI’s work to minimize storm damage.