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<br />: I <br />I <br />I <br />I <br />I <br />\ <br />I <br />I <br />I <br />I , <br />I <br />I <br />\ <br />I <br />I <br />I <br />I I <br />I <br />I <br /> <br />after midnight, it really might have happened before midnight. If a farmer happens to be away <br />from the farm when hail occurs; he may have to guess at the date, in which case he may be wrong. <br />This year there were 22 days in which hail claims were reported for which no seeding during the <br />day had been done, nor had any observation flights been made, probably the most excessive <br />number of times this has happened yet. Good cases can be made for 12-15 of those days being <br />mis-dated this season. <br /> <br />On page 27, Figure 5 shows the 1999 distribution of hail damage throughout the State of <br />Kansas; Table 2, on page 28, lists montWy claims for each county in Kansas. On the whole, the <br />decreases seen both in WKWMP and the State of Kansas the previous two years reversed <br />themselves in 1999. This year the WKWMP hail claims followed the directional trend for that of <br />the State of Kansas which increased 31% from 11,565 in 1998 to 15,105 in 1999. WKWMP <br />claims increased by 56.5%, rising from 2,500 in 1998 to 3,913 in 1999. However, looking at the <br />year-to-year change only in the rest of Kansas (non-WKWMP counties) we find 11,192 claims <br />this year versus 9,065 in 1998---a 23.5% increase, less than half of the increase in the WKWMP. <br /> <br />These are unsettling numbers; however, claim numbers alone can't explain why this <br />happened. AS mentioned earlier in this section, approximately 44% of the total season hail damage <br />was done during three stonn periods, not days, during which seeding at cloud base could not be <br />perfonned: (1) May 31st/June 1st, (2)June 10th/11th, and June 30th/July 1st. All these periods <br />were overnight severe storins in which low ceilings were a critical factor, inhibiting effective cloud <br />base seeding within the WKWMP while at cloud top the stonns themselves limited effectiveness. <br /> <br />Probably the best way to get a better feel for the recorded conditions on each of those <br />periods is to re-print our after-action reports of daily seeding activities which is sent out weekly in <br />our Newsletter. Below are the pertinent summaries for the three periods which represents 1,727 <br />claims out of the 3,913 totalWKWMP claims for 1999, 44.1% of the tbtal1991 claims: <br /> <br />May 31st/June 1st - Northern Target Area: Colby Radar began monitoring very severe stonn <br />in western Kit Carson County, CO at 4:33 p.m. Due to below minimum cloud ceilings planes <br />could not be launched to intercept the stonn. However, the cloud-top aircraft was able to begin <br />seeding for hail suppression 6:39 p.m. south of Burlington, CO. Seeding for hail continued until <br />6:51 p.m., ending southeast of Burlington, CO. <br /> <br />A second operation began at 8:26 p.m. with three planes launched to a line offast-moving <br />stonns oriented southwest to northeast, from Burlington, CO to Benkelman, NE. However, <br />continued low ceilings and poor visibility forced them to return to base without seeding. The <br />cloud-top aircraft was able to begin seeding for hail, starting in Sheridan County, west of Hoxie at <br />11: 12 p.m. and continued until 12:08 p.m., June 1st, seeding across Sheridan, Graham and <br />northern Gove counties at which time the line of stonns moved out of the target area east of Rill <br />City. <br />Hail and a funnel cloud was observed throughout most of Kit Carson County along the <br />stonn track. The bow echo which fonned in NW Kansas drove hail with high winds causing <br /> <br />26 <br />