Occurrence of hail storms and strategies to minimize its effect on crops
Among the extreme weather events hailstorm in recent past caused significant crop damage across the country. In 2014 and 2015 unseasonal rains and hailstorms during March and April damaged rabi crops as well as horticultural crops extensively in many parts of the country. In this paper, a detailed analysis of occurrence of hailstorm in four homogenous regions of India during past 35 years from 1981 to 2015 has been made, to find out the climatological and favourable synoptic aspects associated with hailstorms so that timely issuing of warning and Agromet Advisories could minimize the crop damage/loss. Maximum hailstorms were observed to have occurred in Maharashtra (31 years) during the period of study with highest occurrence of 11 days during 24 February to 14 March, 2014.