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<br />
<br />V. HAIL DISTRIBUTION
<br />
<br />A list of crop-hail damage claims is periodically sent to us from the Kansas/Oklahoma
<br />Hail Loss Service, based in Washington, Kansas, Data on these lists provide the location of the
<br />of the crop damage by township, range and section, the date of damage and the type of crop
<br />damaged, but nothing about the estimated loss value, The hail claims data WKWMP accumulates
<br />for the entire state of Kansas during the season is categorized by date, county and whether or not
<br />they were inside or outside the WKWMP target area and are collected during the crop-growing
<br />season through Oct. 15th each year. More accurate data would be immediately available if the
<br />actual dollar amounts ofloss and liability were also provided. But, unfortunately, no such data are
<br />available to the public until several months after-the-fact, usually in the following year, and then
<br />only county damage is given, never down to the date and township level of occurrence.
<br />
<br />Historically, 2001 was a light year for WKWMP crop-hail damage insurance claims in
<br />wheat; overall, it was mixed for other crops, but generally relatively light for the season. The dry
<br />weather in June, normally our worst month for damage, accounted for this, Crop-hail damage
<br />insurance claims both for Kansas counties inside and outside the WKWMP were greater this year
<br />largely due to last year's drought (lack of storms) producing abnormally low claims numbers.
<br />Figure 5, on the next page shows a map of the county hail-claim distribution over the State of
<br />Kansas in 2001, whereas, Table 3, on page 29, lists the county monthly damage claims, Figure 5
<br />shows two regions of significant hail damage: (1) a large one in Central and Southwest Kansas
<br />and (2) a small isolated area in Northeast Kansas, Ford led the state with 525 claims this year.
<br />
<br />A large, generally NE-SW oriented rectangular area of higher hail damage appears with
<br />Ford County at its SW bottom; the northern side being bounded by Finney Ness and Ellis counties
<br />and its southern side bounded by Pawnee, Stafford and Rice counties, The NE end of the area lay
<br />in Barton County, between Ellis and Rice, The "isolated" higher hail damage area lay in Marshall
<br />County in NE Kansas, There were other "isolated" peak areas of hail damage, but they were all
<br />much less than that of Marshall at 248 claims,
<br />
<br />We need to present to the reader the usual disclaimer regarding using crop-hail damage
<br />insurance claims as a means of judging cloud seeding effects on hail damage: Hail claims alone
<br />are not meant to be hard evidence to indicate overall hail reduction, however, in the manner
<br />we present the data there may be times when effect is "suggested."
<br />
<br />Crop-hail insurance claims data provide a fairly quick method of learning the relative
<br />amount of crop-hail damage occurring from storms, Many years such data has proven very useful
<br />in giving advance estimates of the magnitude and extent of hail damage on a given day, From
<br />these data we try to compare one hail-day to another, e,g" say that one county had 500 claims one
<br />day and another county had few; the county with 500 claims was likely more damaged than the
<br />other. Similar comparisons are harder, e.g., 50 claims versus 30, or 70, don't tell us much since
<br />actual storm damage is missing, Such comparisons are not foolproof, therein resides the problem,
<br />
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