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This is a story about Uganda, a small East African
country. You may find it hard to believe at once but it hailed in
southern Uganda, about right on the equator. On top of
that, it happened three times in one week. Every time, it
started as a cloudless clear day in the morning but toward noon,
thunderclouds began to spread from the south. Then, the sky turned
dark in an instant and it hailed with blasting winds and a pouring rain.
It was only several days after I learned on the news that hail had caused
serious damage to crops, green onions in particular, in Ibaraki, Japan, at
the end of May, 2000.
It squalls often in Uganda, which
holds a large water jug called Lake Victoria to the south, because as the
lake surface is warmed up, the air containing a lot of vaporized water is
carried high up in the sky with updrafts and gets cooled off rapidly.
This seems to explain the high precipitation in southern Uganda. Nevertheless, I did not expect hail at all.
The third hailstorm was particularly fierce.
Hail
of as big as 2cm fell with gusts and a downpour that amounted to over 50mm
within about 30 minutes. I have never experienced such a downpour
even in Japan, that exceeds 100mm per hour: Visibility became less than
20m and drainage canals overflowed in a blink of an eye.
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After the heavy rains, I went to take a look at the
farm of Mukono Provincial Farmers Training Center and was
dumbfounded. The green beans with pods grown big, to be harvested in
about 10 days were blown down by the force of the rains. Their
leaves were full of holes from the hail and the distinctive odor of the
bean leaves when they are torn floated around the field. Ripening corn
with its silk already extracted, too, was tilted by the gusts and its
leaves torn by the hail to shreds along the veins. Moreover,
tropical crops such as cassava and papaya lost almost all the leaves
but their stems. At the fields just sown, traces of topsoil
washed away by the local downpours were clearly seen.
According
to one of the center's promoters whom I asked, although hailing of this
magnitude is unheard of, it certainly does hail in the area. Farmers
who do not have enough food even as it is must be worried because of this
damage. As I heard, cassava, when its leaves receives a shock,
produces some substance and sends it down to its edible roots underground, making
them very unpalatable. Since most of the crops need to be sowed
again, it will take some money and labor. In addition, the timing of
harvest will be further delayed and the farmers will also have to worry
about food shortages.
Despite all this, the crop damage by the hail that day
was never reported by TV, newspapers or other mass media. Unlike
such natural disasters as flood and earthquake, which cause damage to a wide
area, including deaths, perhaps a local natural phenomenon like hail
does not have as much impact socially.
As I had returned to Japan and was writing this, it
hailed in Nagano as well, wreaking nearly fatal damage to crops,
particularly grapes whose bunches were just starting to grow and watermelons that
were about to be shipped. This reminded me of the experience in
Uganda and made me realize high risk in agriculture anew.
(Trans.:
TS) |
