Hail Hunting Research Group Spends Night In Pierre Preparing For Friday Severe Weather

PIERRE, (KCCR) — A group of meteorologists and scientists studying hail in severe thunderstorms made an overnight stop in Pierre Wednesday night. ICECHIP 2025 stands for In-situ Collaborative Experiment for the Collection of Hail in the Plains. Using four Doppler on Wheel trucks, and a host of support vehicles, the program looks to address five areas. They include hailstone growth and fall behavior; in-storm hail trajectory and updraft relationships; quantifying model hail forecasting skill, with a focus on environmental wind, moisture, and temperature; surface properties of hail and their impacts and the relationship between physical properties and growth of hail to how it looks on radar. Members of the group that stopped in Pierre declined recorded interviews about the program, but said they traveled to Pierre from a bust forecast in Scottsbluff, Nebraska and were headed to Bismarck, North Dakota to prepare for a Friday severe weather threat that includes according to the Storm Prediction Center, significantly severe hail of two-inches or greater.