When Music Meets Hail – AMS Headlines

By agostino manzato et al.

Key messages from
Italian Hail: Music, Life, and Research

Agostino Manzato (ARPA Friuli Venezia Giulia – OSMER and CNR – ISAC) and Jun-Ichi Yano. Published online in BAMS, September 2025. For the full, citable article, right click the title link for options.

Major hailstorms pounded Azzano Decimo in northeast Italy in August 2021 and July 2023. The second produced a hailstone of 19 cm (~7.5 in) that broke the European hail size record, whereas the first event led to nine 10-cm-sized (~4-in-sized) hailstones, which were preserved for subsequent scientific examination.  

Our essay on these hail events introduces the involvement of the regional meteorological observatory—Osservatorio Meteorologico Regionale dell’Agenzia Regionale per la Protezione dell’Ambiente Friuli Venezia Giulia (OSMER–ARPA FVG)—with both events, along with explaining the meteorological and cultural backgrounds of such seemingly extreme but actually quite common occurrences.

Hail in Italy is far more frequent and severe than genuinely expected from a stereotype of the Mediterranean nation of benign weather and placid grape growing. The severity of the hail in this area can even be felt vividly, in concert with socioeconomical aspects, through the tradition of Italian music, especially in Summer, the second concerti in Antonio Lucio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. 

Our essay explains the thunderstorm and hail research at OSMER–ARPA FVG), in the northeast Italy town of Palmanova, particularly from the perspective of the first author, Tino Manzato. His research is embedded into his Italian life, not only at a personal level, as he grew up in this region, but more importantly, in social, cultural, and historical manners. The second author, Jun-Ichi Yano, visited OSMER in January 2024 and was fascinated by the research activities made by this very small regional met service, to the point of suggesting we write something about this record hailstorm story and the common passion of both authors for music. That is basically how our essay came to be.

From the point of view of general readers, a good starting point for approaching our essay is to think about Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, because he was a composer from this part of the world.  Probably not everyone listens to his classical music, but since it so famous, it is hard to imagine having never heard this piece. The beginning of Spring, the first concerti in the The Four Seasons, is so popular that it could even be heard in a huge American shopping mall, though most shoppers may not know the name of it. Spring represents a lively Italian spring with a flamboyant atmosphere.

Probably less known is the fact that Vivaldi chose hail—and specifically extreme and destructive hail—as the theme of Summer, the next piece in The Four Seasons. But why did he choose such a theme for the Italian summer? That is the key question answered in our essay. And how a summer with hail in Vivaldi’s music reflects upon the social life there.

Geographically, we begin with the FVG Plain, bordering the Veneto region of northeast Italy, containing Trieste and Udine as its major cities, and hence not far from Vivaldi’s own town, Venice (Venezia in Italian). It is encircled by the Eastern Alps from the north, with peaks reaching up to 2,780 m high that face the Marano and Grado lagoon and the Adriatic Sea to the south. To those familiar with the effects of topography on local weather, it would not be hard to guess the weather’s characteristics in this region during the warm season: Thunderstorms. In particular, intense hailstorms.

Hail is a main research focus of OSMER–ARPA FVG: the research center currently coordinates about 200 hailpad stations operated by volunteers over the FVG Plain. A hailpad is a polystyrene plate that becomes dented by falling hailstones, which can provide a good estimate of hail size and the spatial density of hailstones. Their function is not only to monitor hail occurrences at the ground, but also derive information on hail size distribution and estimate hail kinetic energy flux. This information could potentially be used with the nearby Fossalon di Grado C-band dual-pol Doppler radar to validate its remote sensing hail-detection algorithms.

In addition to measuring the “footprint” of the hailstones during these two extreme events, OSMER–ARPA scientists contacted local residents who had preserved in their freezers 9 large fallen hailstones with sizes up to 9 cm, collected all 9, and helped the hailstones travel around the world, thanks to a free collaboration between important worldwide meteorological institutions.

The scientific results of this international project are summarized in a paper just accepted to the 2024 European Hail Conference special issue of the journal, Frontiers.

METADATA

A Brief Conversation
with the Authors

Headlines: What got you initially interested in meteorology?

Agostino Manzato (ARPA Friuli Venezia Giulia – OSMER and CNR – ISAC): During the last years of my degree in physics with a thesis in cosmology, every time I visited my grandfather’s house in the countryside, I wondered what that huge tower rising in the middle of the corn fields was. It turned out it was the C-Band Doppler radar of Fossalon di Grado. Thus, when I was looking for a job, my dad said to me: “You should send them your CV [Curriculum Vitae].” So I did … ! 

Jun-Ichi Yano (Météo-France): My story is slightly more twisted than Tino’s: I grew up as an astronomy boy, watching planets with my home telescope. So I decided to become an astronomer, especially to study Jupiter—my favorite planet and its surface features to sketch. However, it did not take me long to realize that I was watching the weather of Jupiter by telescope. So I entered a Ph.D. program in meteorology to study Jupiter. It took me a while to realize that Earth’s weather is far more fascinating that Jovian weather. 

Headlines: How did you become interested in the topic of this article?

J-IY: The plan for this essay pretty much suddenly came to my mind after my first visiting Palmanova, Italy, in January, 2024. Tino recounted his personal story of these historic hailstones. I also learned from him that hail is very frequent in this region, and he stuck me with the fact that it was exactly a type of summer that Vivaldi was presenting in his classic, The Four Seasons. For many years, it was a mystery to me, why Vivaldi would choose hail as the main theme of his Summer. But it became very clear that these incredible hailstorms are why.

AM: Of course, we agreed upon this plan right away, because we both love music. And I also love hail as well.

Headlines: What surprised you the most about the work you document in this article?

AM: How the “hail problem” in this part of the world was already a big issue … even 300 years ago.

J-IY: …and to know that is why Vivaldi chose hail as the theme of his concerti Summer.

Headlines: What was the biggest challenge you encountered while doing this work?

AM: Building a way to connect apparently very different arguments. 

J-IY: Trimming various sideline comments and anecdotes that we added in the original manuscript.  We got so fascinated with telling our stories that we kept adding many side remarks for fun.