Blaise Pascal was a man of faith and at the same time a mathematician and physicist, which he was able to reconcile well in the 17th century. What he, as a scientist, would have thought about flying into storm clouds with motorized aircraft and spraying silver iodide there so that the moisture would not fall as hail, but only as rain, remains to be seen. This hail flying, which a club in Rosenheim has been practicing for decades, is scientifically supported. However, it has not yet been possible to prove that it really has any effect. So the whole thing remains a question of faith, roughly in the spirit of Pascal’s wager.
With this, Pascal wanted to show that it was better to at least believe in God as a precaution. Because if it really existed, it would reward belief in the afterlife and punish disbelief – and if it didn’t exist, then it wouldn’t. This may be a bit complicated for hail flying, especially since it probably only takes place in this world. For them, this can be boiled down to a formula that has proven at least as successful as hail-flying: If it doesn’t help, it won’t hurt anything. And it won’t do much damage this year either.
There was already talk of damage at the annual meeting of the hail flying association, which is the largest association in Rosenheim with around 8,000 believers. The Bavarian Insurance Chamber has now estimated the material damage caused by the hailstorm, which devastated Bad Bayersoien and Benediktbeuern, among others, on August 26th at 230 million euros. The violence of destruction was therefore “absolutely unique”.
The event was also unique for the hail pilots – otherwise they had next to nothing to do this year. This is what emerges from the annual report that the district office of Rosenheim, the official home of the hail pilots, has now sent out. There in Rosenheim, that storm didn’t ruin the start of the autumn festival, but instead flooded the festival meadow in the form of heavy rain. The hail pilots had reached the supercell a good distance further west, where they had achieved “a strong reduction in the number of hailstones”. Whether that is true remains a matter of faith. But if not: Compared to the 230 million euros, the costs for the hail pilots this year will not have been a huge loss.