ISLAMABAD, March 24: Every once in a while Mother Nature reminds us who’s really in control. We saw that again last week when hail damaged cars in Blue Area.

But that was nothing compared to the destructions caused to small farmers in Bakhar, Fatehjang and around Khana Bridge and beyond in the Tarlai area. While most of us in the twin cities were uploading photographs of the hail on the social networks, small farmers said the pallets of ice and hard snow flattened their crops.

“The wheat had almost bloomed and it was only a matter of a few more days before we could harvest it. But the crops could not handle the heavy pounding of hail that slashed through leaves and knocked buds to the ground,” said Mohammad Imran Raza of Tarlai village.

People under the open sky were hurt and so were animals, said Mohammad Imran Raza who also lost a buffalo that was tied in the open and died a day later from illness. He said it became too dangerous to set foot out from his shelter to save the animal. He did not just lose his field of wheat but also his fruit trees.

In the 15-plus years, he has been growing wheat, vegetables and salads on a piece of land stretching some 25 kanals past Chak Shehzad, Chaudhry Mohammad Riaz has witnessed such events twice before. He lost his produce back in 1997-98 and then again in 2005.

“We grow them and care for them like we pamper our own children. Most of us had sown seeds back in September and October.

Prospects were good and there was plenty of water this year. It was almost time to reap all that hard work we had put in when the hail destroyed everything,” said Riaz. The farmers may celebrate the harvesting months from March to April but these 60 days are also a period for concern.

Dr Ghulam Rasul, the chief meteorologist at the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) Islamabad, explained how smallholding farmers dreaded heavy rainfall let alone hail during the harvesting period.

The PMD has the technology to predict hail but only six to 12 hours earlier.

Pointing at the irregular blue, green and yellow clouds on the radar of his computer screen, Dr Rasul explained how each patches identified/described the intensity of rain or hail.

“Alarm bells ring when yellow, purple and red patches appear on our screens. It could mean that downpour might be heavy between 70mm to 150mm in an hour,” he said, commenting on issuing early warnings. Dr Rasul said the size of the hail grew larger the higher the water vapour rose into the skies.

“Water vapour rises higher when there is increased temperature on the ground,” he said.

The PMD had also predicted hail again on March 23 and 24 besides heavy showers.

But no matter how advanced the technology and how early the warnings, in such events people could save their lives or their livestock only.

Everything else was at the mercy of the natural world, said Dr Nasir Mehmood Cheema, the director crops production, Pakistan Agriculture Research Council (PARC).

“It has come into our knowledge that small farmers in these areas have been affected. There is no clear data how much crop damage was done in the last weeks hailstorm. The timing is particularly bad given that March and April are the harvesting months,” said Dr Cheema.

Though the crop losses due to the hail last week were irreparable, Dr Cheema did recommend that if the farmers applied more fertiliser now, they might be able to revive some of the crops.

But for Mohammad Akeel from Bakhar, near Fatehjang, who sowed chickpea on four to five acres and wheat on another 25 acres, everything was over. He will be starting fresh the next winter season.