For two years straight, a record number of hail storms have battered crops across Alberta. With this summer’s hail season just around the corner and crops beginning to grow, farmers are crossing their fingers, hoping bad hail years don’t come in threes.
Two Record Years Back-to-Back
A record 89 severe hailstorms pelted the province last summer, including in Ponoka County, leaving unprecedented levels of crop damage behind.
“We paid out $40.3 million in claims through our Straight Hail program - the highest ever in our 70-year history,” says Carol Simpson, Coordinator of Insurance Processing for Agriculture Financial Services Corporation (AFSC), the provincial Crown corporation that provides the majority of hail insurance to Alberta farmers. Environment Canada reported 83 severe hailstorms the year before, compared to 48 in an average year.
Natural Weather Patterns
It’s “mainly chance” that Alberta has seen its two worst years for hail back-to-back, says Geoff Strong, a meteorologist and adjunct professor at the University of Alberta who has studied thunderstorm and hail formation across the province for 35 years. “We’ve seen strings of bad hail years before in this province due to natural weather patterns,” he says, noting that in the early 50s, there were four or five intense hail years in a row.
It’s too soon to say if this summer will be another record breaker. A lot depends on how wet and warm things get during the coming weeks, says Strong, explaining heat and humidity from evaporating soil moisture are two key ingredients in hailstorm formation. “Unfortunately the same conditions that promote crop growth set the stage for hail storm formation.”
Soil moisture is in the general range of moderately low to near normal in Ponoka County. June and July are often the wettest months in Alberta, says Ralph Wright, a soil moisture specialist with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development. “It’s hard to know what will happen. It’s difficult to predict the weather.”
Risk is High Every Year
Lawrence Murphy hopes to avoid a repeat of last summer when a big hail storm tore through about 400 acres of promising crops, doing 50 to 100 per cent damage. “My land is spread out over eight miles stretching north-to-south, so the risk is high every year that we’ll get hit with hail somewhere,” says Murphy, who farms near Eckville.
Murphy is among thousands of Alberta growers who filed hail claims with AFSC last year. “We processed over 3,000 claims through our Straight Hail program, compared to more than 2,200 the year before,” says Simpson.
Central Alberta Hardest Hit
Alberta gets more hail than anywhere else in Canada, thanks in large part to the northwest-southeast alignment of the Rocky Mountains, says Strong. As warm, dry air flows eastward over the mountains, it clashes with moisture above the foothills to produce storms. Central Alberta sees the most hail, but no corner of the province is immune, he says.
“Hail has always been one of the biggest problems facing farmers in Alberta. One minute they can have a bumper crop - 10 minutes later, they’ve got nothing because a hail storm ripped through their fields,” says Rod Rains, a member of the AFSC History Committee, which has been looking back at Alberta’s hail history this spring, as the corporation marks 70 years of providing public hail insurance across the province.
Alberta’s Hail History
Rains says hail insurance has been around since the early 1900s, but heavy hail losses in the 1920s and ’30s made it extremely difficult to provide farmers with hail insurance back then.
“Historical accounts show many private insurers went broke shouldering millions of dollars in losses at that time and the depression years led to the collapse of hail insurance offered by municipalities because farmers couldn’t pay their premiums.”
In 1937 - with no municipal hail insurance in place and only a limited number of private insurers - many farmers were left unprotected, he says. “That’s what forced the government to take action and pass special legislation creating the Alberta Hail Insurance Board in 1938, now called AFSC. It made hail insurance available to all farmers in the province, even in the highest risk areas. That same mandate continues today, although now it also includes crop insurance, lending, and income stabilization programs.”
“Hail insurance hasn’t changed much since then,” says Simpson. “AFSC continues to build up reserves over time to cover off the bad years, and usually there’s enough surplus to issue premium rebates to farmers.”
For more information, producers can contact their local hail agent, AFSC office, or call the AFSC Call Centre at 1-888-786-7475.