Previously the stuff of movie magic, tiny sensors, like the ones in the movie Twister, are helping meteorologists learn more about hail.
A researcher from Australia's Bureau of Meteorology teamed up with Western's Northern Hail Project (NHP) over the summer to release those sensors, known as hailsondes, into a hailstorm for the first-time ever.
"It started as a weekend project to see if the technology was there to build such a device," said Joshua Soderholm, an Australian thunderstorm scientist.
Soderholm developed the technology, with several partners from around the world, in 2021. "There was a significant amount of engineering to ensure it could also survive the extreme conditions inside storms," he said.
The sensors are 24g hailstone-shaped probes that are attached to balloons and released inside storm updrafts. Once released, they are intended to behave like hailstones, capturing measurements of the pathways hail takes and the conditions in which hailstones grow as they moved through a storm. The hailsondes also measure significant ice growth.
In July, Soderholm was invited to participate in an ongoing NHP field study in Alberta, to both conduct research and train students how to use the new technology.
He said using the hailsonde system alongside NHP equipment isn't as easy as it sounds, as it requires "being at the right location at the right time with the right type of hailstorm."
On July 24, the team intercepted the right type of storm and successfully launched two hailsondes into it.
"Collecting data from the eye of the storm is the white whale of meteorological research," said NHP executive director Julian Brimelow. "This unique dataset will improve our capacity to simulate models of hailstorm events and provides direct validation of what hailstones experience during a storm."
Plans are now underway to use the technology in larger numbers for data collection and to find a way to retrieve the probes once they've fallen to the ground.
This hailsondes technology was a finalist for the Harry Otten Prize for Innovation in Meteorology last year. The Harry Otten Pize is an international award presented every other year by the European Meteorological Society (EMS) for hardware or software innovation that can be readily applied and bring benefits quickly.
