In the American Plains, severe hailstorms are exacting an escalating toll on agriculture, infrastructure, and insurance costs, prompting renewed scientific scrutiny into the physics of hail and its role in driving financial losses. Researchers have recently intensified efforts to better understand hail formation and behavior, particularly amid growing evidence that hail — rather than tornadoes — is the primary factor behind rising insurance claims in the region.

Sean Waugh, a NOAA research scientist, and his team have spent several recent seasons chasing storms across Oklahoma, focusing on the destructive ice pellets ejected from tornado circulations at speeds exceeding 200 miles per hour. Equipped with high-speed cameras and powerful lighting systems, the researchers capture detailed footage of hailstones midflight, revealing that much of what was previously known about hail came from a limited sample of stones that survived impact and did not melt before being collected. This new data challenges existing meteorological models and may improve forecasting accuracy.

The research is part of broader efforts, including the In-situ Collaborative Experiment for the Collection of Hail in the Plains (ICECHIP), which at its peak constituted the largest hail research project ever conducted. However, the project has largely wound down due to significant cuts in federal science funding after the dissolution of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) disaster tracking program in 2025.

Hail damage poses serious economic threats, especially to farmers like Kenton Gossen of western Oklahoma, whose wheat fields suffered severe destruction last summer. Hail shattered stems and flattened crop heads across 2,400 acres, leaving him with a potential loss of approximately $300,000 despite insurance payouts partially offsetting the damage. Such events are emblematic of a broader trend: the frequency and severity of billion-dollar weather disasters have intensified over the past decades. Whereas in the 1980s a billion-dollar disaster occurred every four months on average (adjusted for inflation), by recent years the interval has shrunk to roughly every three weeks.

Experts such as Adam Smith, former head of NOAA’s storm program, emphasize that hail now drives much of the escalation in living costs across the heartland, placing pressure on insurance companies to raise premiums. Climate researchers, including Dr. Ian Giammanco of the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety, note that losses due to severe storms appear to be doubling every decade, though attributing these changes directly to climate change requires further study.

With federal funding curtailed, much of the ongoing hail research depends increasingly on private sector support, particularly from insurance and reinsurance companies interested in underwriting more precise risk models. Victor Gensini of Northern Illinois University highlights this shift as a reflection of how extreme weather is influencing the allocation of research resources.

Despite challenges, teams such as the Low-Level Internal Flows in Tornadoes experiment (LIFT) continue to gather data close to tornadoes, capturing hail dynamics integral to understanding storm impacts. For those living in vulnerable regions, like Mr. Gossen, scientific advancements offer hope for better preparation amid an environment of increasingly frequent and intense storms. “We’ll figure out a way to get through it,” he said, underscoring the resilience required to face a changing climate.