By Josee Valcourt / The (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger

Nissan Motor Co. incurs millions of dollars a year in hail damage to new cars parked outdoors. So when it looked like hail this week at its Canton, Miss., plant, the factory fired sonic booms into the air to break up the hail before it could reach the ground.

Nissan says it’s the first automaker in the United States to use the hail-protection generator, which has been used by farmers to protect crops for more than a decade.

The machine is designed to protect the fleet of new vehicles placed daily in the shipping yard, said Wendy Polk, a spokeswoman for Nissan.

“Over the past years, Nissan has incurred literally millions of dollars from hail damage. At any moment we can have several thousand vehicles in our shipping yard,” she said. “This is a way to protect our investment by preventing damage to vehicles ready to be shipped.”

The hail protection generator detects when conditions make hail possible. It automatically fires sonic waves into the atmosphere, disrupting the formation of hailstones within a one-mile radius.

“The sonic waves continue every five seconds until the weather condition has changed,” said Polk, who would not release the cost of the machine.

“We could hear the sound all morning,” said Gale Constable, owner of a boathouse about eight miles from the plant. “It was so annoying.”

Constable described it as a thumping sound that left her with a throbbing headache.

The plant did not receive phone calls from residents inquiring about the noise coming from the generator, Polk said, but the company plans to install an abatement fence to deaden its booming sound.