PROPANE DEALERS CELEBRATE AS HAIL HITS HAIL ALLEY

In most of the United States, hail bounces off of solar panels like a duck's back, and most people have never seen a hail-pinged car roof or cracked windowpane. 

The states along the 100th Meridian , which runs close to the Texas towns  of Dunning and Kruger are not so lucky. The same storms that spawn tornados blast rain to freezing heights, and what goes up wet can come down hard. After baseball-sized hail struck the town's solar field, Scottsbluff City Manager Kevin Spencer told Cowboy State Daily:

“Just by looking at it, it looks destroyed to me.  The Federal Emergency Management Agency  ranks this area in its highest category for hail risk on the national index.”

His managerial sang froid reflects a local fact of life : hail insurance is an agricultural and commercial  norm and priced to competitively reflect the rarity of life and property threatening storms :

 

 

One Nebraska paper reported: 

“The hail shattered most of the panels on the
5.2-megawatt solar project, sparing an odd 
panel like missing teeth in a white smile.”