Hail No! NBC, Climate Change Isn’t Making Hail More Damaging

In the NBC News video report titled “How climate change could make hail storms even more destructive,” viewers are warned that stronger storm updrafts caused by climate change might supercharge hailstones, making them up to 75 percent larger. This claim is false and misleading, lacking any evidentiary support. Scientific data—including that from the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC)’s Sixth Assessment Report—shows no observable increase in hail intensity due to climate change. In fact, IPCC AR6 Chapter 12 concludes that there are no significant trends or projections of increased hail frequency or severity due to a warming climate.

Real-world data and atmospheric physics don’t align with NBC’s hype. Hail formation requires a very specific cocktail of atmospheric conditions, including strong updrafts and a freezing layer deep enough to support hail growth. Warmer temperatures tend to reduce the vertical depth of this freezing level, making it more difficult—not easier—for large hailstones to form and survive to ground level.

The most telling and absurd quote in the entire segment is this one: “Their latest research shows that climate change will make updrafts even stronger, which could make the biggest most destructive hail up to 75 percent larger…”. That statistic, plucked from speculative modeling and not grounded in observed trends, is presented as if it is established fact. Worse, it’s paired with ominous warnings about damage to crops and rising insurance claims, all without context or acknowledgment that hailstorms have long been a fact of life in agricultural regions.

Attributing hail damage trends to climate change is scientifically dubious and intellectually dishonest. Hail damage costs have increased over time primarily due to increased development and property values in hail-prone areas—not because hailstorms are getting worse. This mirrors the same pattern seen with hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods: more assets in harm’s way, not more severe weather, results in greater damage and higher costs.

A thorough analysis debunks the claim that hailstorms are intensifying. In fact, the data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows a slight decrease in reported significant hail events over recent decades. According to a 2019 peer reviewed study “The characteristics of United States hail reports: 1955-2014” says:

Hail days, in contrast to hail reports, show no national trend over the last 25 y. Regional and local influences on hail reporting are identified stemming from verification procedures and contributions from local officials. The change in the definition of severe hail size from 0.75 in (1.9 cm) to 1.00 in (2.5 cm) in 2010 has a particularly clear signature in the report statistics. The contribution of storm chasers and source of report factors beyond population to the hail dataset is also explored, and the difficulty in removing these changes discussed. The overall findings highlight the limitations and non-meteorological features present in hail observations.

Even the American Meteorological Society (AMS) in its journals has noted the difficulty of linking hail trends to climate change due to the limited reliability of long-term hail observations noting, “Estimating local‑scale hail frequency … or assessing long‑term trends in light of climate change are challenging tasks, particularly because direct, homogeneous, long‑term hail observations are mostly missing.”

Hail is notoriously hard to measure consistently over time. Its occurrence is often underreported in sparsely populated areas, and radar-based detection has only become reliable in recent decades. Thus, claims of increasing trends require more scrutiny than NBC or ICECHIP provides.

The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report clearly addresses hail concerns in Chapter 12,  stating: “There is low confidence in observed trends in hail and low confidence in the attribution of these trends to human influence.” It continues: “Future changes in hail are uncertain, and there is low confidence in model projections.”

Massive hailstorms have occurred throughout history, long before anyone blamed climate change. The 1888 Moradabad hailstorm in India killed 246 people. The U.S. has recorded hailstones the size of volleyballs since the 1960s; no CO₂ fingerprint required. Looking at a deeper historical perspective quickly dismantles the “climate is causing it all” narrative pushed by NBC.

The real motivation behind NBC’s video seems to be continuing funding for a particular group of scientists, those participating in ICECHIP (Investigation of Convective Hail in the Plains), a project “made possible through the support of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF),” not an accurate assessment of hail threats. Nowhere on the site’s mission statement does ICECHIP mention climate change as a research objective. Their stated goal is to better understand the internal dynamics of hailstorms—not to link those storms to global warming aka climate change.

So, when NBC laments potential cuts to NSF funding, and suggests that the Trump administration threatens America’s ability to forecast weather hazards, it is not hard to see what’s really going on: special interests using climate change as a fear-inducing narrative to protect their federal funding.

Further, if we’re going to talk about research integrity, let’s ask why a group like ICECHIP would publicly tie its work to climate change only after securing federal funding. Their project materials don’t reference it, their mission statement doesn’t highlight it, and their methods are entirely focused on hail microphysics and not long-term climate attribution.

This is not to say that understanding hail formation isn’t important. It is. Improved hail forecasting can reduce economic losses and improve public safety. But turning every scientific endeavor into a climate crusade only erodes public trust in science. When every research grant proposal must include a climate angle, it encourages groupthink, skewing scientific priorities away from discovery and toward narrative compliance.

The United States has always experienced hail. It is an inherent feature of mid-latitude convective storms, particularly in spring and early summer. Suggesting with little or no evidence that recent hailstorms are somehow novel or worsening because of rising CO₂ is just propaganda.

NBC’s segment fails to question any of the claims made by the ICECHIP. NBC doesn’t reference the IPCC, it doesn’t compare historical hail trends, it fails examine the extent to which urban expansion in hail prone areas result in rising insurance payouts and rates, and it doesn’t even even distinguish between modeled projections and observed data.

Indeed, NBC’s hailstorm climate segment is a masterclass in misleading science communication, conflating speculation with certainty, omitting key data and historical context, and promoting a self-serving narrative designed to secure federal funding for a particular group of researchers. In this story, NBC acts like an advocacy organization rather than an objective news outlet.