Across the nation, hailstorms cause an average of $1 billion in damage each year to property and crops.
OUR STATE IS AT THE CENTER OF THE MOST HAIL-PRONE REGION, and from March through June Oklahomans batten down the hatches and hope to weather the storm without significant losses.
This February, I attended the first-ever full-scale artificial hailstorm designed to test how different types of roofing and siding perform during the real thing. The simulation, produced by the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) Research Center in South Carolina, consisted of approximately 10,000 hailstones of varying sizes fired from multi-barreled air cannon arrays that hung 60 feet above the test sampling.
Excerpted from this month’s print edition of Slice magazine. To read the full article, click here to read our digital edition.
