Indigenously Developed Anti-hail Guns
Source : Indian Express
GS III : Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment

Why in News ?

Himachal Pradesh government will be testing the use of indigenously developed ‘anti-hail guns’ against hailstorm.

Key Facts

• Anti-hail guns developed in India will be installed in some areas on a trial basis.
• In 2010, the state government had imported three anti-hail guns from the United States and installed them in three separate villages in the apple-growing belt of Shimla.
• Why it needed ?
  • Frequent hailstorms in the fruit-growing areas of Himachal destroy apples, pears and other crops.
  • The entire apple crop in an orchard may sometimes get destroyed during such storms.

How Indigenously Developed Anti-hail Guns Works ?

• An anti-hail gun is a machine which generates shock waves to disrupt the growth of hailstones in clouds.
• The gun is fired by feeding an explosive mixture of acetylene gas and air into its lower chamber, which releases a shock wave.

Shock wave : Waves which travel faster than the speed of sound, such as those produced by supersonic aircraft

• These shock waves stop water droplets in clouds from turning into hailstones, so that they fall simply as raindrops.
• Anti-hail guns try to disrupt in a radius of 500 metres.
• The machine is repeatedly fired every few seconds during an approaching thunderstorm.
• Once hail is already formed in the clouds, the guns can do little to stop it.

How this Hailstorm Occurs ?

• Hail is produced by cumulonimbus clouds which are generally large and dark and may cause thunder and lightning.
• Winds cumulonimbus clouds in can blow up the water droplets to heights where they freeze into ice.
• The frozen droplets begin to fall but are soon pushed back up by the winds and more droplets freeze onto them resulting in multiple layers of ice on the hailstones.
• This fall and rise is repeated several times till the hailstones become too heavy and fall down.

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