The national hail damage mitigation system has started its eighth protection season

By: STA Date: 2025. 04. 15. 09:00

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The National Chamber of Agriculture (NAK) launched the National Ice Damage Mitigation System (JÉGER) on April 15, which has started its eighth protection season. The system, which releases silver iodide into the clouds from 986 points across the country, prevents several billion forints of damage in agriculture every year, and also protects residential, industrial, state facilities, real estate and movable property.

(Photo: Pixabay)

The alert period of the hail damage mitigation system, which started on April 15, 2025, will last until September 30, 2025. The system, which consists of a total of 986 ground generators – 223 automatic and 763 manual – provides nationwide coverage. The ground generators burn an active substance containing silver iodide, which reaches the clouds with updrafts, reducing the size of the ice particles that form there. The probability of hail cannot be completely ruled out, but it can be guaranteed that the size of the falling ice particles will be smaller than those that would fall without the use of the system. The generators had to be turned on for 93 days in 2024 – during the protection season between April 15 and September 30 – for a total of nearly 188 thousand operating hours. The system proves its worth year after year, and the generator operators play a major role in this, who are on standby every day and respond quickly to alarms.

The soil generators were delivered at the end of last year for the winter, and they were prepared and deployed properly for the protection season.

In addition, the IT system was further developed and tested. The silver iodide active ingredient required for start-up was also delivered to the generator operators. This year is the eighth year of operation of the system built by NAK, and the Ministry of Agriculture provides a maximum of 2 billion forints of separate funds per year for its operation. According to calculations, every 1 forint spent on the system saves about 33 forints of production value, which means more than 60 billion forints of saved production value on an annual basis.

NAK