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Great Plains Quarterly
Great Plains Studies, Center for
10-1-1983
Across The 49th Thunderstorms In The Northern
Great Plains
Alec H. Paul
University of Regina
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Paul, Alec H., "Across The 49th Thunderstorms In The Northern Great Plains" (1983). Great Plains Quarterly. Paper 1696.
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ACROSS THE 49TH
THUNDERSTORMS IN THE
NORTHERN GREAT PLAINS
ALECH. PAUL
Hail, lightning, flash floods, erosion, severe
gusty winds, and tornadoes produce multimillion-dollar losses to the economy of the
northern plains each summer. Research into
these meteorological phenomena has been
fragmented by the presence of political boundaries in the Great Plains, especially the 49th
parallel, which separates the United States and
Canada. Perceptions of and responses to the
thunderstorm hazard still differ north and
south of the border. Tornadoes, for example,
have only recently appeared in the weather
forecasts for the Canadian prairies, and such
responses to summer storms as weather modification experiments and hail insurance coverage
have been made in different ways in the two
countries.
Because the most spectacular manifestation
of thunderstorm weather, the tornado, occurs
most often in the southern and central plains,
and because storms have traditionally been
considered more severe in these areas than in
the relatively sparsely populated north, most of
the detailed research into the thunderstorms of
the plains has been done in a few limited regions, particularly in Oklahoma, Kansas, southern Illinois, and eastern Colorado. This article
treats the thunderstorm hazard in the more
northerly portion of the Great Plains, as shown
in Figure 1. As it is clear from my data that the
thunderstorm problem is common to both the
American and Canadian sections of the northern
plains, I examine the sometimes different responses to storm problems on either side of the
49th parallel. Finally, I show that a more unified approach to the thunderstorm problem in
the northern plains is emerging, as researchers
on both sides of the international boundary
marshall their resources to produce a more
effective system for monitoring and understanding the characteristics of storms and their
impact on the land and people of the plains.
THE SCALE OF THUNDERSTORM HAZARD
Tornadoes and devastating hail and lightning
storms vie with drought as the chief components of the "climatic image" of the southern
and central Great Plains. Farther north, blizzards and drought receive the most attention;
Alec H. Paul is professor of geography at the
University of Regina. He has published several
articles on hail and thunderstorms on the Canadian prairies and has served as chief editor of
Prairie Forum.
195
196 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 1983
Of
.......... ,
'.
\
\
.
\
\
MONTANA
0',
'- \
0•
I
\
\
\. WYOMING
,
'-- -,'I
FIG. 1. The study area, with existing and
former hail-suppression projects. The larger
circles indicate statewide programs financed by
state funds; other symbols indicate projects of
smaller scale.
thunderstorm weather has seemed less important. Only recently has a more accurate assessment of the damage done by northern plains
thunderstorms begun to emerge. In Iowa, Steve
Eshelman and John Stanford investigated the
1974 thunderstorm season and found a vast
and largely unsuspected amount of damage. 1
Recent work on the Canadian prairies has produced similar results. 2 This research suggests
that the decline in thunderstorm severity from
Kansas and Colorado northward may be less
than is usually perceived. One reason for this
perception is that population density, an important factor in accumulated storm damages,
is relatively low in the northern plains.
Crop losses caused by hail in the northern
plains states and on the Canadian prairies are
very high. This region is the spring wheat belt,
where the hail season and the growing season
closely coincide. Stanley Changnon's study of
hail losses in the United States showed that
loss costs for crop-hail insurance (the ratio of
losses paid to the amount of risk underwritten)
in the northern plains states are high, with some
of the largest values being found in eastern
Montana and Wyoming. Changnon found that
over the decade from 1960 to 1969, North
Dakota led all other states in dollar losses to
hail. 3 Hail-insurance loss costs on the Canadian prairies are similar to those immediately
south of the 49th parallel. In view of the large
area of cropland, it is not surprising that dollar
losses are high. In Saskatchewan alone, crophail damage in the 1960s has been estimated at
about one-seventh of the loss in the entire
United States for the same period. 4 Thus hail
remains an important hazard throughout the
northern plains and into the Canadian prairies.
Tornadoes are an occasional, unwelcome
adjunct to severe thunderstorms. It has often
been shown that tornadoes decrease in frequency northward and northwestward from the
"Tornado Alley" of the south-central Great
Plains. 5 Gordon McKay and A. B. Lowe suggested in 1960 that this decrease continues
north of the 49th, with tornado frequency in
western Canada at a maximum in southeastern
Saskatchewan and southwestern Manitoba and
decreasing northwestward and northeastward. 6
Recent attempts at documenting tornado
touchdowns on the Canadian prairies suggest
that the frequency is higher than expected, and
probably not significantly lower than in the
northern tier of Great Plains states. 7 These
states are regarded as an outlying extension of
Tornado Alley, with a local maximum of
tornado frequency in eastern Montana and
western North Dakota. 8 The U.S. Weather
Service has developed official watches and
warnings for tornadoes. By contrast, the word
tornado began to appear in weather forecasts
for the Canadian prairies only in the late 1970s,
despite the fact that the largest death tollthirty persons-for a single tornado anywhere in
the northern plains occurred in Regina, Saskatchewan, in 1912. Canadian popular opinion
still tends to relegate tornadoes to the United
States.
Thunderstorm-produced floods have their
most dramatic consequences in mountainous or
at least hilly terrain, where they cause devastating flash floods in small drainage basins. The
Rapid City disaster of June 1972 and the Big
ACROSS THE 49TH 197
Thompson Canyon flood of July 1976 are
cases in point. 9 However, heavy thunderstorm
rains produce floods with occasional fatalities
and great damage to property, crops, and farmland throughout the flatter sections of the
North American interior. These are "milliondollar rains," in the negative sense (table 1).
Like hail and tornadoes, they occur on both
sides of the 49th parallel.
Other thunderstorm hazards are lightning
and high winds. The compiled data on their
effects in the northern plains are scanty at best,
but local newspapers appear to be a promising
source, according to studies done by Dan Blair
in southern Saskatchewan. 10 Thunderstorm
winds and lightning strikes present major problems for power and telephone companies. Total
losses due to wind and lightning require much
research to compile; one of the few thorough
studies of lightning-produced power outages is
by Steve La Dochy, for Manitoba. l l Table 2
illustrates some examples of lightning and
thunderstorm wind losses in the northern
plains.
This brief overview of the thunderstorm
hazard in the northern plains states and the
Canadian prairies lacks a detailed dollar assessment. Preliminary work suggests, however, that
total thunderstorm losses in the region of this
study amount to millions of dollars annually,
a sum large enough to stimulate increasing efforts to reduce and adjust to thunderstorm
losses. 12
RESPONSE TO THE HAIL HAZARD
The general behavior of severe hailstorms in
the North American interior appears fairly
consistent. Most storms produce long, narrow
tracks of hail across the countryside ("hailswaths"), although large convective complexes
producing hail "areas" rather than clear-cut
swaths also occur. Hail is a significant hazard
in all parts of the region under study, and
there are a variety of ways to cope with the
problem. Insurance, for example, is available
throughout the region, but premiums are so
high in some localities that many farmers
TABLE 1
EXAMPLES OF LOSSES FROM THUNDERSTORM RAINS
Location
Date
Estimated Losses
(Million $)
Rainfall
(Inches)
Minneapolis-St. Paul area
30-31 August 1978
>
5
6
Rochester, Minnesota
5 July 1978
>50
6
Southeastern North Dakota
28-29 June 1975
>50
Deadwood, South Dakota
14 June 1976
6
Lethbridge, Alberta
22 August 1978
1
3
Regina, Saskatchewan
25June 1975
12
6
Winnipeg, Manitoba
20 May 1974
7
1
~
12
SOURCES; The information in this table was taken from Storm Data, a monthly publication of the U.S. National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, from insurance estimates (revised rather than initial) reported in newspapers, and from K. A. Fluto and P. B. Lemieux, The 1974 Victoria Day Rainstorm in Winnipeg and Vicinity,
Canada Department of Transport, Meteorological Branch, Tech. Mem. 824 (Toronto, 1975).
198 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 1983
TABLE 2
LIGHTNING AND THUNDERSTORM WIND LOSSES IN THE STUDY REGION
Location
Date
Cause of loss
Loss
Mankato, Minnesota
23 July 1977
Lightning
Elks Club fIre: $300,000
Carbon, Montana
2 July 1978
Lightning
1 death
Gettysburg, South Dakota
29 July 1979
Lightning
1 death
Fulda, Saskatchewan
23 June 1980
Lightning
1 death, 1 severe injury
West-central Saskatchewan
3 June 1976
Storm winds
1 death; $4 million
Fort Totten, North Dakota
6 July 1977
Storm winds
Trees uprooted, an electrical
switching station and a centerpivot irrigation system damaged
Wheatland, Wyoming
24 June 1978
Storm winds
Roofs removed, municipal water
tower damaged, trees uprooted
SOURCES: Storm Data and newspapers.
choose not to insure their crops against hail
damage. 13 Hail suppression, a form of deliberate modifIcation of weather, has been attempted
in some instances (fIg. 1).
Insurance. Hail insurance in the northern
Great Plains was fIrst sold in 1889 in North
Dakota. The earliest hail-insurance companies
were too localized and were gradually replaced
by or combined into bigger companies that
spread their risk over much larger geographical
areas. The importance of the hail hazard in the
northern plains is indicated by the presence of
hail-insurance operations run by states and
provinces. North Dakota was the fIrst state to
have a hail-insurance program, in 1911; Montana and Nebraska followed in 1917 and 1918
respectively, and South Dakota in 1919. 14 Of
the three such state hail-insurance programs
remaining in operation today, two are in the
northern plains, in Montana and North Dakota.
(The other is in Colorado.) On the Canadian
prairies, the government of the North-West
Territories instituted a crop-hail insurance
scheme in 1902, followed after 1905 by province-sponsored schemes in the three prairie
provinces. Saskatchewan's municipal hail program, for instance, was established in 1913
and continues to the present time. 1S
Premiums for hail insurance in the study
region are set for each township, the six-milesquare unit of the initial land survey. It is thus
possible-admittedly only in certain extreme
cases-for a farmer to pay almost twice as much
for hail insurance, on the same amount of liability for the same crop, as his neighbor across
the road. Such an anomaly arises from the
insurance companies' practice of deriving premium rates in most cases from their experience
of hail losses in individual townships, rather
than grouping townships into larger areal units
for the purpose of setting rates. Since two
companies often have different loss experiences
even within a single township, they may set
different premium rates for hail coverage in
that township. Rates are more consistent south
of the 49th, because most United States companies writing hail insurance belong to the Crop
Hail Insurance Actuarial Association, which
standardizes the premiums charged in a particular township by its members.16
ACROSS THE 49TH 199
Insurance is not a completely satisfactory
response to the hail hazard. In high-premium
townships, many farmers are reluctant to pay
for insurance, and they look for other solutions
to the hail problem. 17
Hail suppression and hail research. Many
people believe that hail can be suppressed by
cloud seeding, a form of weather modification
technology that is controversial and statistically unproven. The theory is that the "seeding"
of large numbers of tiny particles of silver
iodide or another suitable substance into the
hailstorm cloud will result in larger numbers of
much smaller hailstones than would occur
naturally. It is postulated that the hailstones
will largely or even completely melt during
their fall to the ground and that crop-hail
damage will therefore be reduced.
The willingness to utilize and support hail
suppression has been much greater in the states
than on the Canadian prairies, where it has been
tried only in central Alberta (fig. 1). Early
attempts to evaluate these suppression projects
scientifically were inadequate. Without any
sound proof of their claimed success, the public
support on which they depended faded away
after a number of years. Barbara Farhar has
described the situation in South Dakota, where
the state government established a statewide
program of weather modification by cloud
seeding for both rainfall enhancement and hail
suppression in 1972, and then terminated it in
1976 in the face of public controversy.18
An important outcome of the pioneer hailsuppression programs of the 1950s was the
institution of basic research into the characteristics of the region's hailstorms. The government
of Alberta, for instance, received a request
from a number of central Alberta farmers
plagued by severe hail in the early 1950s
for financial support for a hail-suppression
program. The provincial government responded
that it could not finance a program whose
benefits had not been scientifically proven.
In 1956, however, Alberta joined with the
Canadian federal government and the meteorology department of McGill University to
establish a basic research project known as
Alberta Hail Studies. This project has greatly
increased our understanding of hailstorms,
and in the 1970s it evolved into an operational
and research-oriented hail-suppression program.
The Saskatchewan Hail Research Project
(SHARP) ascertained that the hailstorms of
southern Saskatchewan are only slightly less
severe than the notorious storms of the high
plains, as studied in Colorado and Alberta. 19
SHARP also surveyed the opinions of local
farmers on the relative importance of certain
weather hazards to agriculture in the region
and found that drought was perceived to be a
much greater threat than hail. 20 In fact, cropinsurance payments in Saskatchewan for hail
have been larger than those for drought in most
years. The farmers' perception reflects the
catastrophic effect that drought may have in a
limited number of years, and it may partially
explain why farmers in the region displayed
little awareness of the existence of cloudseeding programs elsewhere that aim to suppress hail.
On the American side of the study region, a
project based at Rapid City, South Dakota, has
contributed much basic knowledge on the
characteristics of hailstorms. 21 Studies of the
hail climatology of the northern plains, however, have been restricted to general work such
as Glenn Stout and Stanley Changnon's Clima-
tography of Hail in the Central United States. 22
The one major exception is the work of E. M.
Frisby, especially in eastern South Dakota. 23
The most significant hail research and suppression effort on the American Great Plains has
been further south, in eastern Colorado. It
culminated in the U.S. National Hail Research
Experiment of 1972_76. 24
Hail forecasting. Although accurate shortrange forecasting of hailstorms cannot help
reduce damage to crops, it can decrease other
losses to some extent. In some cases automobiles and farm machinery can be moved into
garages, carports, or sheds, planes on the
ground can be parked in hangars, and planes in
flight can be diverted around the storm. Livestock, people, and poultry may be moved
indoors. But these measures are not always
200 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 1983
feasible, and in any case much of the property
loss in hailstorms is damage to windows, siding,
and roofs.
The forecasting of hailstorms involves two
steps. The fIrst is to identify general meteorological situations that will produce hailstorms
at unknown locations within the forecast
region. The second involves the actual tracking
of severe thunderstorms by radar and the anticipation of their specifIc paths. In practice,
step two is incorporated into public forecasts
only if there are indications that a tornado may
accompany the storm; furthermore, not all
areas are scanned by weather radar. Since hail
forecasting results in only small reductions in
ground-level damages, it has been important
primarily for aviation and the hail-suppression
and hail-research projects. Hail forecasting for
central Alberta and western South Dakota has
received this specialized attention. 25 In other
parts of the study region, the practice of forecasting hail is often hindered by lack of feedback. The forecaster may not hear of hail in
his region unless it falls at one of the widely
dispersed fIrst-order weather stations. In the
absence of information, he does not know
whether his forecasts regarding the chance of
hail have been correct or not. 26
Breeding hail-resistant crop varieties. Some
work has been done in the northern plains to
develop hail-resistant crops and to determine
how hail inflicts damage on plants. 27 These
efforts have not led to significant improvements; in general, crop resistance to other
hazards, such as drought or insects, has been
considered more important.
Noncontiguous farmland patterns. In most
storms hail damage is confIned to long, narrow
strips, or "damaging hail-swaths." Thus it has
often been suggested that a farmer might reduce his loss to hail damage in a given year by
working two or more parcels of land several
miles apart. Another suggestion is that the holdings should be in locations such that the line
connecting them is perpendicular to the prevailing direction of hailstorm movement.
This is a fallacious argument, because maps of
hailstorm tracks in the northern plains show
that damaging storms may arrive from any
point of the compass between 1800 and 3600 • 28
In fact, several studies in the Great Plains have
ascertained that farmers do not obtain noncontiguous landholdings for the purpose of
reducing hail 10ss.29 The common occurrence
of "fragmented" farms in the region is a result
of the farmers' need to expand their scale of
operations. They have thus purchased or rented
additional land wherever it was available within
a reasonable distance of the home quarter. 30
RESPONSE TO THE TORNADO HAZARD
Although the threat of tornadoes in the
northern plains is similar north and south of the
49th parallel, the responses of the two countries have differed markedly. Canadians have
tended to denigrate the tornado hazard on the
Canadian prairies until very recently, while in
the northern plains states, the danger of tornadoes has been considered small but significant enough to merit scientific research.
The northern plains states. Table 3 summarizes the damage caused by some major
tornadoes in the northern plains states. Meteorologists have estimated that tornadoes have
been relatively infrequent in the region, but it
is possible that the reporting of tornadoes is
less complete in these states than in Tornado
Alley. Eshelman and Stanford, for instance,
conducted a detailed survey of severe local
storms in Iowa for the summer of 1974. 31
They identified three times as many verified
tornado touchdowns (eighty-one) as were
reported in the official listing of the National
Severe Storms Forecast Center (twenty-seven).
Serious study of tornadoes in the northern
plains states dates from the 1950s. U.S. government weather offices in the region have released
many tornado watches and warnings, using the
forecasting techniques developed farther south.
Specialized climatological studies of tornadoes
in the area have been undertaken by scholars
such as Richard Skaggs, for Minnesota. 32
Public awareness of the tornado danger has increased, and in some parts of the region tornadopreparedness plans have been put into place and
ACROSS THE 49TH 201
TABLE 3
SOME TORNADOES IN THE NORTHERN PLAINS STATES
Date
Deaths
Injuries
Fargo, North Dakota
20 June 1957
10
100
Tracy, Minnesota
13 June 1968
9
Elgin, North Dakota
4 July 1978
5
35
Gary-Fosston, Minnesota
5 July 1978
4
38
Cheyenne, Wyoming
16 July 1979
1
40
Location
SOURCE: Storm Data.
emergency organizations are thoroughly drilled
on appropriate measures in severe storms. 33
One basic difficulty for the researcher lies
in the contrast in population density between
the dairy belt of Minnesota and the wheatand rangeland of the Dakotas and the high
plains. Until the 1970s the frequency of tornadoes in the high plains of Colorado, Wyoming,
and Montana was thought to be very low. 34
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, however,
this view has been revised. Some devastating
tornadoes have occurred in the cities, and more
tornadoes are being reported in formerly empty
areas where the population has grown because
of increased tourism and the exploitation of
mineral resources. 35 Eastern Montana and
Wyoming, long regarded as areas of low tornado
incidence, are being reevaluated. For example,
J. T. Schaefer et al. have identified a locale in
eastern Montana and western North Dakota
with a tornado frequency above the regional
average. 36
A view is therefore emerging of the northern
plains states as an extension of the major
tornado hazard zone of the central and southern plains. All forecast offices of the region give
serious consideration to the chance of tornadoes in spring and summer. Tornadoes are
known to be the most dangerous storms in
terms of the number of deaths and injuries
per unit of area affected. Public awareness of
the hazard is strongly influenced in the United
States by the extensive publicity they receive
in the national news media.
The Canadian prairies. The situation has
been noticeably different in Canada. The word
tornado almost never appeared in the weather
forecasts for the region until the late 1970s.
Yet tornadoes do occur on the prairies, and in
1960 an important milestone was reached when
A. B. Lowe and G. A. McKay published their
study, "The Tornadoes of Western Canada,"
for the Canadian government's Meteorological
Branch, the predecessor of today's Atmospheric
Environment Service (AES).37 The study involved a review of the front pages of local
newspapers, local histories, and other sources,
followed by telephone calls, letters, and interviews to verify the occurrences. Lowe and
McKay documented about one hundred deaths
caused by tornadoes.
Despite the publication of this dramatic
report, AES forecasters in the Canadian prairies
began to issue tornado watches only in the mid1970s, after a number of tornadoes occurred
in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Budget cuts
suffered by the AES led in 1979 to the consolidation of all forecasting for Manitoba and
Saskatchewan into the Winnipeg office. Because
Lowe and McKay had concluded that tornadoes
202 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 1983
on the Canadian prairies are most frequent in
southern Manitoba, the Winnipeg office had
maintained a listing of Manitoba tornadoes
from 1960 on and thus possessed a more
realistic appraisal of their frequency than the
Regina Weather Office had. The Regina office
had begun to assess tornado occurrence in
southeastern Saskatchewan, but after 1979,
such efforts expanded in Winnipeg. Using local
newspapers as his source, Dan E. Blair has compiled a more exhaustive listing of Saskatchewan
tornadoes from 1971 to 1980. 38 A study by
Keith Hage, for Alberta, appears to be the most
painstaking work on tornadoes on the Canadian
.. .
39
pralnes In recent years.
When all this recent work for the Canadian
prairies is brought together, a long-overdue
reassessment of the tornado hazard in the
region will be possible. Enough tornadoes have
been documented from the 1960s and 1970s
to demonstrate that a threat exists and that the
Severe Weather Watch program, now implemented across the prairies, is justified.
A MORE UNIFIED ApPROACH
Gradually a more unified approach to the
problems of living with summer storms in the
northern plains is emerging north and south of
the border. On the American side, the availability of tornado-forecast information for the
entire United States since 1953 (from what is
now the National Severe Storms Forecast Center
in Kansas City) has played an important role in
this development. In effect, the forecasterin the
northern plains states was backed up after this
date by an increasingly sophisticated and specialized arm of the National Weather Service.
The more systematic reporting of tornadoes in
the U.S. northern interior, coupled with the
forecast effort, has spread an awareness and
preparedness that would not have arisen without the nationally supported program.
The same point applies to the hail problem.
The small hail-suppression projects of the 1950s
and 1960s still operate in some instances. However, the important question of the so-called
downwind effects of cloud seeding, together
with the need to establish scientific credibility
for hail suppression, led to the emergence of a
more holistic approach in the 1970s, especially
in the United States, where both state and federal governments became involved in weather
modification operations and research. Hailstorms often cross state lines, and seeding a
storm in one state may affect its behavior in the
next. 40 Major hail research projects, such as the
National Hail Research Experiment in northeastern Colorado, have thus received federal
funding in recognition that Washington has a
responsibility where the interests of individual
states in a weather-modification wrangle may
conflict. Yet the vexing question of the efficacy of hail suppression is still not answered.
Hail insurance also has become more standardized in the United States. The Crop-Hail
Insurance Actuarial Association not only sets
rates for its member companies within a given
township, but also has such a vast amount of
accumulated experience that the excessively
high premiums formerly charged in some
regions are gradually being reduced.
Research on severe local storms is now being
carried out in the United States in parts of the
northern plains where it has not been conducted before. The High Plains Experiment
(HIP LEX) in Montana and the increased study
of tornadoes in the high plains are examples
of this activity.41
This more unified approach to the thunderstorm problem is now spreading across the
49th parallel to the Canadian prairies. The
skeletal record of thunderstorm outbreaks, so
scant in the past (especially of storms that
straddled provincial boundaries or "ended" or
"started" at the 49th), is being fleshed out.
The severe thunderstorm weather across the
southern prairies in the final week of June 1975
provides an excellent illustration (fig. 2). It
covered a large area and was part of an outbreak that seriously affected the northern
plains states as well. This outbreak effectively
buried the notion that tornado-producing
thunderstorms on the Canadian prairies are
freak, isolated events. Heavy damage occurred
in many locations on both sides of the border.
ACROSS THE 49TH 203
~ Severe storm track
L-Lightning death or major damage
W-Thunderstorm wind damage
",
F -Thunderstorm flooding
H-Local severe hail
'"
T-Tornado
\, w
FIG, 2. Severe thunderstorm weather, 24-30
June 1975.
Studies of such conditions by AES and other
researchers have greatly aided prairie forecasters. A Severe Weather Watch program is
now in effect on the prairies. Weather radar was
introduced in southern Saskatchewan in 1981,
a partial supplement to systems in use at Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, and Red Deer. Interest in hail suppression by cloud seeding, however, has not spread beyond central Alberta.
Canadians have had little knowledge of the
North Dakota State Weather Modification
Program, which certainly had a potential influence on severe storms tracking north or northeast into Saskatchewan or Manitoba. Commercial hail-insurance companies on the prairies
still charge rates that may differ from company
to company for the same township.
Research in Canada is advancing. Severe
weather outbreaks have been tracked from one
province to another and have on occasion been
linked with simultaneous severe weather south
of the border. 42 For example, thunderstorms
originating in south-central Saskatchewan on
the night of 19-20 June 1974 were tracked as
far southeast as Indiana over the next two days.
Because experience tracking such far-reaching
storms has shown that severe local weather may
travel great distances, the provincial research
council of Saskatchewan has expressed concern
over possible downwind effects from the cloud-
seeding actlvltles of the Alberta Hail Project,
and the federal AES is charged with monitoring
all weather modification programs in the country.43 Prairie forecasters are fully aware of
weather conditions developing on both sides of
the border and pay special attention to the U.S.
forecasts for the northern plains states, where
the information on upper-air conditions is
much better than the data for the prairies.
Research on severe local storms in the
northern plains of the North American interior
is showing signs of greater coordination, both
within and between the United States and
Canada. Americans and Canadians alike can
make valuable contributions to a greater
understanding of and more effective response
to the problem of storm hazards. The emerging
cooperation across the 49th parallel should
continue to build on the foundation that has
been laid.
NOTES
1. Steve Eshelman and John L. Stanford,
"Tornadoes, Funnel Clouds and Thunderstorm
Damage in Iowa during 1974," Iowa State Journal of Research 51 (1977): 327-61.
2. See, for example, Dan E. Blair, "The
Thunderstorm Hazard in Saskatchewan" (M.S.
thesis, University of Regina, 1983); Steve
La Dochy, "Lightning Hazard in Manitoba: A
Review" (Paper delivered at the annual meeting
of the Canadian Association of Geographers,
Ottawa, 1982); Alec H. Paul, "The Thunderstorm Hazard on the Canadian Prairies," Ceoforum 13 (1982): 275-88.
3. Stanley A. Changnon, Jr., "Examples of
Economic Losses from Hail in the United
States," Journal of Applied Meteorology 11
(1972): 1128-37.
4. Alec H. Paul, "Hailstorms in Southern
Saskatchewan," Journal of Applied Meteorology 19, no. 3 (1980): 305-14.
5. Most recently by D. L. Kelly, J. T.
Schaefer, R. P. McNulty, C. A. Doswell III,
and R. F. Abbey, Jr., "An Augmented Tornado
Climatology," Monthly Weather Review 106,
no.8 (1978): 1172-83.
6. Gordon A. McKay and A. B. Lowe, "The
Tornado in Western Canada," Bulletin of the
204 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 1983
American Meteorologial Society 41, no. 1
(1960): 1-8.
7. Searches of such sources as local newspapers in all three prairie provinces in recent
years have revealed numerous tornadoes that
were not previously known to practicing
meteorologists in the region. Very few of these
studies have been published; one exception is
the report by T. B. Shannon, Manitoba Tornadoes, 1960-73, Canada, Atmospheric Environment Service, Meteorological Applications
Branch, Project Report no. 29 (Toronto, 1976).
8. J. T. Schaefer, D. L. Kelly, and R. F.
Abbey, Jr., "Tornado Track Characteristics
and Hazard Probabilities," in Wind Engineering,
ed. by J. E. Cermak (Oxford and New York:
Pergamon Press, 1980): 95-109. Tornado
Alley is a name often used for the area that
extends from the Texas Panhandle to the
central Mississippi valley and has the highest
tornado frequencies in the United States.
9. Robert A. Maddox, Lee R. Hoxit,
Charles F. Chappell, and Fernando Caracena,
"Comparison of Meteorological Aspects of the
Big Thompson and Rapid City Flash Floods,"
Monthly Weather Review 106 (1978): 375-89.
10. Blair, "Thunderstorm Hazard in Saskatchewan."
11. La Dochy, "Lightning Hazard in Manitoba."
12. In Saskatchewan alone, annual thunderstorm losses average $130 million (in current
dollars), at a conservative estimate; Alec H. Paul
and Dan E. Blair, "Thunderstorm Hazard in
Southern Saskatchewan" (Paper delivered at
the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Denver, 1983).
13. See, for example, A. L. Rydant, "Adjustments to Natural Hazards: Factors Affecting the Adoption of Crop-Hail Insurance,"
Professional Geographer 31, no. 3 (1979):
312-20.
14. Leon B. Perkinson, Crop-Hail Insurance
in the United States, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service Report
ERS-249 (Washington, D.C., 1965).
15. E. G. Hingley, Municipal Hail Insurance:
A History of the Saskatchewan Municipal Hail
Insurance Association, 2d ed., rev. (Regina,
1967).
16. Changnon, "Losses from Hail in the
United States."
17. Over 40 percent of farmers in the
Calgary-Red Deer area of Alberta had purchased no hail or general crop insurance in the
years from 1964 to 1973; E. P. Lozowski, "An
Alberta Weather Modification Survey," Albertan
Geographer 11 (1975): 1-11.
18. Barbara Farhar, "People's Attitudes and
Concerns," in Hail Suppression Impacts and
Issues, ed. by Stanley A. Changnon, Jr., et al.
(Urbana: Illinois State Water Survey, 1977), pp.
123-29.
19. Paul, "Hailstorms in Southern Saskatchewan," p. 313.
20. Raymond E. Clyde, "A Study of Saskatchewan Farmers' Perceptions of Hail,
Drought, and Flood as Hazards to Agriculture"
(M.A. thesis, University of Regina, 1981).
21. See, for example, A. S. Dennis, C. A.
Schock, A. Koscielski, and D. J. Musil, Report
on Hailstorm Models Project, Institute of Atmospheric Sciences, South Dakota School of
Mines and Technology (Rapid City, 1969);
A. S. Dennis, C. A. Schock, and A. Koscielski,
"Characteristics of Hailstorms of Western South
Dakota," Journal of Applied· Meteorology 9
(1970): 127-35.
22. Glenn E. Stout and Stanley A. Changnon, Jr., Climatography of Hail in the Central
United States, Crop-Hail Insurance Actuarial
Association, Research Report no. 38 (Chicago,
1968).
23. E. M. Frisby, "A Study of Hailstorms of
the Upper Great Plains of the North American
Continent," Weatherwise 17, no. 2 (1964):
68-75; idem, "Relationship of Ground Hail
Damage Patterns to Features of the Synoptic
Map in the Upper Great Plains of the United
States," Journal of Applied Meteorology 1
(1962): 348-52; idem, "Hailstorms of the Upper
Great Plains of the United States," Journal of
Applied Meteorology 2 (1963): 759-66.
24. Charles A. Knight, G. Brant Foote, and
Peter W. Summers, "Physical Research and
General Conclusions from the National Hail
Research Experiment," in Preprints, Sixth Con-
ference on Planned and Inadvertent Weather
Modification (Boston: American Meteorological
Society, 1977), pp. 162-65; G. O. Linkletter
andJ. A. Warburton, "An Assessment ofNHRE
Hail Suppression Seeding Technology Based on
Silver Analysis," Journal of Applied Meteorology 16 (1977): 1332-48.
ACROSS THE 49TH 205
25. Richmond W. Longley and C. E. Thompson, "A Study of the Causes of Hail," Journal
of Applied Meteorology 4, no. 1 (1965): 69-82.
26. For example, a severe hailstorm on 17
August 1974 in southern Saskatchewan went
totally undetected by the official weather
records, even missing all the Atmospheric
Environment Service cooperative weather observers; Alec H. Paul, "Some Unofficial Observations of Summer Storms in Southern Saskatchewan, 1973-77," in Essays on Meteorology and Climatology; In Honour of Richmond
W. Longley, ed. by K. D. Hage and E. R.
Reinelt (Edmonton: University of Alberta,
1978), pp. 191-210.
27. D. B. Knowles, The Effect of Hail
Injury on Wheat and Other Grain Crops in
Saskatchewan, University of Saskatchewan
Research Bulletin no. 102 (Saskatoon, 1941);
M. M. Afanasiev, The Effect of SimuL:i.ted Hail
Injuries on Wheat, Montana Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin no. 613 (Bozeman,
1967).
28. See, for example, Frisby, "Hailstorms of
the Upper Great Plains," p. 72; Paul, "Hailstorms in Southern Saskatchewan," pp. 30910; L. Wojtiw, Climatic Summaries of Hailfall
in Central Alberta (1957-73), Alberta Research, Atmospheric Sciences Report 75-1
(Edmonton, 1975), pp. 31-47.
29. Rydant, "Adjustments to Natural Hazards," p. 318; Clyde, "Saskatchewan Farmers'
Perceptions."
30. E. J. Smith, Jr., "Fragmented Farms in
the United States," Annals of the Association
of American Geographers 65 (1975): 58-70.
31. Eshelman and Stanford, "Tornadoes in
Iowa during 1974."
32. Richard H. Skaggs, "Aspects of Minnesota Tornadoes," Minnesota Geographer 22, no.
2 (1970): 9-15.
33. See, for example, H. Michael Mogi! and
Herbert S. Groper, "NWS's Severe Local Storm
Warning and Disaster Preparedness Programs,"
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 58, no. 4 (1977): 318-29.
34. A. H. Auer, "Tornadoes in Northeastern Colorado, 1965," Monthly Weather Review
95 (1967): 32-34.
35. Charles A. Doswell III, "Synoptic-Scale
Environments Associated with High Plains
Severe Thunderstorms," Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 61, no. 11 (1980):
1388-1400.
36. Schaefer, Kelly, and Abbey, "Tornado
Track Characteristics," p. 105.
37. A. B. Lowe and G. A. McKay, The
Tornadoes of Western Canada (Toronto: Canada Department of Transport, Meteorological
Branch,1960).
38. Blair, "Thunderstorm Hazard in Saskatchewan. "
39. Keith Hage, University of Alberta, Department of Geography, personal communication. Lowe and McKay's pioneering work on
prairie tornadoes is now being expanded by
several researchers.
40. Ray J. Davis, "Trends in Weather
Modification Legislation," Journal of Weather
Modification 6 (1974): 17-27.
41. Melvin J. Schroeder and Gerard E.
Klazura, "Computer Processing of Digital Radar
Data Gathered During HIPLEX," Journal of
Applied Meteorology 17 (1978): 498-507;
David W. Reynolds, "Observations of Damaging
Hailstorms from Geosynchronous Satellite
Digital Data," Monthly Weather Review 108,
no. 3 (1980): 337-48; Doswell, "High Plains
Severe Thunderstorms."
42. Alec H. Paul, "The Heavy Hail of
23-24 July 1971 on the Western Prairies
of Canada;' Weather 28 (1973): 463-71;
idem, "Summer Storms in Southern Saskatchewan, 1973-77"; idem, "Prairie Tornadoes:
Research Note," Atmosphere-Ocean 19 (1981):
66-70; Frisby, "Hailstorms of the Upper Great
Plains."
43. Canada, Twenty-Eighth Parliament, Third
Session, 19-20 Elizabeth II, 1970-71, The
Weather Modification Information Act. This
was the first Canadian legislation relating to
weather modification.