twenty nine hailstones, each with a charge of 400 grams of silver iodine, the day before yesterday in the period from 16:13 to 18:43, were used for air sowing hail and potentially hail clouds. Hail sticks have been used since radar centers Ѓurbishte и Topolcani determined the danger of hail.

The rockets were fired from a plane at Aeroclub "Skopje". Aerial sowing with silver iodine this year also protects agricultural crops from hail. The plane sowing was done with three planes from the aeroclub "Skopje" - they say from Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Economy.

- A novelty is that instead of two, we have three aircraft at our disposal, which is expected to achieve good coverage of the entire territory of Macedonia and to increase the possibility of operating in several regions that are simultaneously affected by the appearance of hail - say from the Ministry for agriculture.

This method of protection was introduced after the analysis showed that last year there were above average numbers of days with unstable clouds, during which a total of 1.083 batons or 433 kilograms of reagent were thrown out during 180 hours of flight of the planes.

The reagent used is the same as that used in the hail protection system for many years. According to field research, the hail system is less efficient because the reagent does not always enter the unstable air mass, while with airborne seeding of hail clouds the plane comes close to this type of clouds and the cloud currents themselves draw the reagent into the cloud.

On average in the country, about three and a half million euros are paid annually for damages caused by weather disasters.

- If there was no aircraft, there would be great damage in many regions - said after yesterday's storm the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Economy Ljupco Nikolovski.

The Minister said that thanks to the aerial seeding of the clouds and the action of the planes on the weekends in several locations, an effect of protection was achieved, ie a reduction of damages of about 80 percent.

Radar centers Topolcani and Gjurishte regularly monitor the hail clouds and based on the parameters of the radar control, yesterday and the day before yesterday the aircraft for air seeding of the hail clouds were activated.

The radar system for detecting and monitoring cloud masses, which did not work for many years, has been repaired and upgraded. The system has modern radar control and monitoring control units, and the upgraded radar system provides timely forecast of the occurrence of unstable air mass from any direction.

Several tons of obsolete ROCKET FUEL and other EXPLOSIVE MATERIALS brought out of the country