The hail with it!

My cousin Donald told me the story of how his family came to live in, and then move from Canada in the 1930s. Our grandparents had immigrated from Oregon in 1928 and established a farm near the town of Irricana, Alberta. My Uncle Randall came along initially to help them get settled. He returned to Oregon but decided later to come back to Canada and farm on his own.

Randall leased land in the Crossfield area north of Calgary and set out to become fully Canadian. His son, Donald, was born in Irricana in 1932. Unfortunately, in the summer of the family’s first year, a hail storm, not uncommon in that region, destroyed Randall’s entire crop. He decided there and then that farming in Alberta was not for him and moved his family back to the United States.

This is, really, just a minor incident, both in terms of the region in which it occurred and in the history of our family, but it had a profound effect on the people involved as well as impacting future generations. Donald ended up being raised and making his life in a country he was not born into.

But it got me thinking about other people who migrated to far off places during their lifetimes. Were they forced away from their homes because of changes in natural conditions under which they lived and worked. In particular, did a major, or even minor storm disrupt families to the point that they had to change their way of life or move?

Big storms containing hail commonly occur on hot spring or summer days when the heat causes evaporation from the Earth’s surface and carries the moisture up into the cold stratosphere. There the water vapour freezes and starts to fall. The continuous updraft lifts the ice pellets again where they acquire another coat of freezing water. The sequence can repeat several times resulting in vary large “stones” before they can escape the rising air and fall to earth.

In searching historical records, you may find events like the 30 April 1888 storm that devastated the town of Moradabad in India. It struck at midday. Hail stones the size of oranges killed 246 people as well as thousands of farm animals that could not find protection. Strong winds accompanying the storm toppled many buildings. This storm had the highest mortality associated with hail.

As I wrote in my book, Surviving Mother Nature’s Tests (2018, p. 111), “A single storm might produce unexpected results that can affect the outcome of a nation’s history. For example, on 13 April 1360, the army of King Edward III of England were marching against the French at Chartres when a violent hailstorm was unleashed on them. Hundreds of ill-protected men and horses died in the onslaught of hailstones reported to be as large as pigeon’s eggs. Lightning apparently also struck and killed knights in full battle armour. After this onslaught from Mother Nature, with his army in tatters after the onslaught from nature, Edward agreed to a truce under which he got a major portion of the country but was denied the French crown.”

Golf ball and baseball size hail stones are not uncommon. Many readers may have seen such projectiles from the sky. The largest hail storm found so far measured 7 inches in diameter and fell during a storm on 22 June 2003 in Vivian, South Dakota.

Most storms have only been inconveniences. Throughout history some have been deadly. Perhaps more than a few, such as the one that took out my uncle’s crop in 1932, resulted in major changes to a family’s livelihood and history.