Inside the $11M Hail Study: Improving Severe Weather Forecasts with Dr. Victor Gensini

Genesis of the Hail Study

• 💡 The idea for the largest hail study in history, ICE (Integrated Collaborative Experiment), originated in 2017 during a severe weather forecasting experiment in Norman, Oklahoma.
• 🎯 Researchers realized they lacked a reliable method to verify hail predictions, highlighting the need for dedicated ground-truth observations.
• 🔑 This realization spurred an eight-year process of proposal writing and iteration to secure funding for a comprehensive hail research project.

Securing Funding and Building Teams

• 💰 The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded nearly $11 million for the project, enabling the construction of diverse research teams from across the country and internationally.
• 🤝 The grant was awarded in August 2024, with the first field campaign planned for May and June 2025, involving 17 institutions and over 60 students.
• ⚠️ Concerns about potential funding cuts were present, but the award was made prior to new administration changes, though future investment in such scientific projects remained a worry.

Field Operations and Data Collection

• 🚀 The ICE campaign deployed in May 2025, starting with training in Boulder, Colorado, followed by Intensive Observation Periods (IOPs) across the Great Plains.
• 🗺️ Researchers traveled extensively, covering areas from near the Mexican border to the Canadian border, documenting storms for 42 days, with 24 days dedicated to intensive data collection.
• ⚡ The team experienced significant hail events, including instances of over 5-inch hail in Texas, and worked tirelessly, including on holidays and weekends, to capture crucial data.

Data Gathering and Analysis

• 🔬 Each collaborating institution played a specific role, such as weather balloons, Doppler radars, or hail pads, contributing to a holistic data picture.
• 📡 The goal was to achieve dual-Doppler analysis to understand 3D wind fields within storms, crucial for driving hail models and understanding storm dynamics.
• 📊 The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) partnered to test hail resilience of building materials using impact astrometers, measuring energy transfer from hail impacts.

Initial Findings and Future Outlook

• 📈 Early takeaways include measuring impacts from hail greater than 4 inches in diameter and observing discrepancies between Doppler radar data and ground-truth hail verification.
• 📚 The collected data is expected to fuel scientific papers, theses, and dissertations for the next decade, with the publication process alone taking 12-16 months per paper.
• 🌱 The project aims to connect fundamental research on hail formation to its surface impacts, ultimately contributing to a more resilient society through improved forecasting and material science.