Saturday’s article noted Griffith Morgan’s research on the use of cannons in preventing hail damage to crops. Luigi Bombicci, a mineralogist from Bologna, Italy, in 1880, believed hail could be prevented. His theory of “spherohedron” described the hailstone as a process of crystallization; to prevent hail, sound could be used. In 1896, Albert Steiger, Mayor of Windisch-Feistritz, Austria, made the first attempt to defeat hail with sound, using a locomotive smokestack, packing it with black powder, and directing the explosion into the thunderstorm. Steiger professed that hail no longer would fall on his fields and cannons were accepted. We’ll conclude our anti-hail cannon story tomorrow. Fastcast: Hot, spotty showers.
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