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<br />V. HAIL DISTRIBUTION <br /> <br />The year 1999 was a rugged year for hail damage within the WKWMP to some extent. <br />Weather elements came together just right in a few instances to cause abundant numbers of severe <br />storms in the May-June period and ending in early July. <br /> <br />The WKWMP was particularly damaged from three periods in which severe storms raged <br />through it while all of our cloud base aircraft were unable to seed due to low ceilings and poor <br />visibility. These three below-minimum VFR flying periods---periods in which no seeding could be <br />performed except limited seeding at cloud top---accounted for approximately 44% of the total <br />crop-hail damage claims registered this season. The low ceilings were caused by upslope winds <br />which brought in excessively high amounts ofIow-level moisture, a key ingredient in producing <br />severe storms; also, dewpoints were regularly in the high 60s or low 70s, Jet Stream winds were <br />ubiquitous throughout nearly-ail of May and June, vanishing only in early July. Potential <br />atmospheric instability was high most days. <br /> <br />As in other years, crop-hail insurance claims data provide a base from which to examine <br />the crop-hail damage in the WKWMP. In past years both the limitations and merits of using these <br />data have been discussed at length in our final reports. Such data have proven to be quite useful in <br />providing us an advance estimate of the approximate hail damage sustained each year. A list of <br />crop-hail damage claims are sent to us periodically throughout the crop-growing season by the <br />Kansas/Oklahoma Hail Loss Service, which is based in Washington, Kansas. Data on these lists <br />provide the location of the of the crop damage by township, range and section, the date of <br />damage and the type of crop damaged, but nothing about the estimated loss value. More accurate <br />data would be immediately available if the actual dollar amounts ofIoss and liability were also <br />provided. Unfortunately, no such data are available to the public until several months after-the- <br />fact, usually in the following year. <br /> <br />Tire WKWMP accumulates hail claims data for the entire state of Kansas during the <br />season, categorizing them by date, county and whether or not they were inside or outside the <br />WKWMP target area. From these data we can try to compare one hail-day to another in terms of <br />damage. For instance, a day with 500 claims submitted would most likely have been a much worse <br />storm day than one with no claims. However, the distinction gets blurred when one tries to <br />compare a day in which, say, 50 claims were submitted versus one with 30 or 70. Strict <br />comparisons of one day to another are not foolproof in assessing the relative intensity of one <br />storm day to another. <br /> <br />Another unknown is how much crop insurance has been purchased out of the crops that <br />are grown each year? Also, another major drawback to using crop-hail damage numbers is that <br />the date given for the hail occurrence occasionally is incorrect coming from adjusters. Some years <br />this inaccuracy'is worse than others. Part ofthe problem causing this discrepancy occurs when <br />storms occur at night and/or on weekends if the farmer is absent from his farm. The damage often <br />is incorrectly reported as having occurred on the next day's date, or vice versa, when damage <br /> <br />25 <br />