Go ahead, guess.
Nope, it's a hail cannon.
Really. They can be a tad noisy too.
Do they work? Color me skeptical. If they do work, that could be a problem also.
In Colorado, where Fort Lupton and Brighton are the only other places where farmers use cannons, the research on whether they actually work is slim, said Nolan Doesken of Colorado State University’s Colorado Climate Center.
“Without some solid data, it is really hard to judge one way or the other,” he said.
But the World Meteorological Organization dismisses cannons as nonsense, saying that “there is neither a scientific basis nor a credible hypothesis to support such activities.”
A pair of Dutch meteorologists recently published a study concluding that cannons have “no significant effect” on hail. If rocket explosions and thunder can’t destroy hailstones, they wrote, “it follows that surface-emitted sound waves . . . will be even less effective — except maybe to annoy the neighborhood.”
One thing for sure. They sell.
[Is it my imagination or does that place look pretty unlikely for any kind of precip at all?]
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