Mobiliar Lab for Natural Risks

Applied research on hail and wind gusts

From April to September severe thunderstorms regularly affect Switzerland. Wind gusts and hail may cause substantial damage and represent high costs for insurance companies. Switzerland is a perfect laboratory for hail research, because it has a complex topography and because of its exceptional hail data base.

Data from the five polarimetric C-Band radars of Switzerland, crowdsourcing hail reports from the MeteoSwiss App and measurements from 80 automatic hail sensors are being analysed statistically to improve short-term hail predictions (so called hail nowcasting) and to better understand meteorological processes that lead to hail and strong wind gusts.

Primarily responsible: Prof. Dr. Andreas Zischg