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<br />v. HAIL DISTRIBUTION <br /> <br />This year, crop-hail damage appears less inside the WKWMP than <br />in most recent years. In examining the number of crop-hail insurance <br />claims for the southern part of the WKWMP, we see there were 2,165 <br />claims---the lowest of the 5 seasons 1993 - 1997 and second lowest <br />for the" 8-seasons 1990 1997. Fig. 5 shows that hail was <br />concentrated mostly in the western half of Kansas, the exception <br />being that Marshall County, in Northeast Kansas, had the greatest <br />number of hail claims in the State---819 claims. In Northwest Kansas <br />the reader will notice several counties having nUmbers of hail claim <br />followed by (in) and (out); this i~ the notation to show what the <br />nUmber breakdown of the hail claims for that portion of the county <br />(in)side the WKWMP target area and (out)side the WKWMP target area. <br /> <br />Determining a statistically definitive amount of hail damage <br />both in the target area and around the state is impossible within <br />the same seasonal period. The reason is because crop-hail insurance <br />statistical data are not available until approximately the following <br />April. Therefore, we keep track of the crop-hail insurance claims <br />submitted for damage done to crops throughout the season; it's a <br />crude means of measuring hail damage. By themselves, these data <br />cannot answer the question of how little or how great was the damage <br />in anyone area because no information is given other than the date, <br />location and the section number of the damage. However, very large <br />numbers of claims do tend to indicate high damage done within a <br />county on a given day. Making the case for the converse is harder, <br />that is, if there were few or no claims in an area, we still are <br />unsure that there may not have been a significant amount of hail <br />damage which went unreported for some reason. <br /> <br />, <br /> <br />Other unknowns during the year are how many farmers buy <br />insurance'and how much of the total crop grown is insured. If few <br />farmers insure within a county, that county might show relatively <br />little crop-hail damage instead of relatively high damage which it <br />might have sustained. Another drawback to using crop-hail damage <br />numbers is that often the date given for its occurrence are <br />incorrect. For instance, this past summer there were 25 days out <br />of the reported 86 hail-days in the entire target area for which <br />there were no operations, or 29% of the days. Since the WKWMP radar <br />site is manned most of the season on a 24-hour basis, it is hard to <br />make the case that these hail-days were real events which were <br />missed by the radar operators. Part of the problem causing this <br />discrepancy occurs when storms occur at night and damage is <br />incorrectly reported as occurring on the next day's date when there <br />are no operations. If a farmer happens to be off the farm when hail <br />occurs, on weekends and other times, he may guess at the date, in <br />which case he may be wrong. It is not unusual to receive hail damage <br />information in September or October for damage which happened in May <br />and June. <br /> <br />26 <br />