Severe weather experts join Western’s Northern Hail Project

The Northern Hail Project (NHP) will begin researching the frozen thunderstorm-generated phenomenon this summer but work has already started for Western Engineering 's latest severe storm investigation unit with the selection of its leadership team. Julian Brimelow has been appointed as the first-ever NHP executive director and Simon Eng will serve as its research meteorologist. NHP is the next step in severe and extreme weather understanding, prediction and mitigation at Western. Fueled by the success of the Northern Tornadoes Project (NTP) , which was founded in 2017 as a partnership between Western University and ImpactWX, NHP will study the overall impact of damaging hail starting this June in Alberta, eventually expanding in scope to cover all of Canada. Brimelow is a convective weather expert with 20 years of experience studying severe thunderstorms, hail and high-impact hydrometeorological events. Most recently, he worked to improve the detection and prediction of severe hail using radar systems and computer models as a meteorologist for Environment and Climate Change Canada. Previously, Brimelow held posts for the South African Weather Service and the British Antarctic Survey.