Anti-hail guns to help out to Himachal’s problem of crop damage

The Himachal Pradesh government will be testing the use of indigenously developed ‘anti-hail guns’ to help out horticulturists who face crop damage due to hailstorms.

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An anti-hail gun is a machine which generates shock waves to disrupt the growth of hailstones in clouds, according to its makers.

It comprises a tall, fixed structure somewhat resembling an inverted tower, several metres high, with a long and narrow cone opening towards the sky.

The gun is “fired” by feeding an explosive mixture of acetylene gas and air into its lower chamber, which releases a shock wave (waves which travel faster than the speed of sound, such as those produced by supersonic aircraft).

These shock waves supposedly stop water droplets in clouds from turning into hailstones, so that they fall simply as raindrops.

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, where hailstorms in summer cause severe damage to the fruit every year.