In Kashmir’s orchards, every storm now feels personal and every loss unpaid, Amir Yaseen reports.

Before sunrise on Friday, the hail came hard enough to wake entire villages.

In Tral, in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district, people stepped out into the dark to the sound of ice striking tin roofs, leaves and branches – sharp, relentless, almost metallic. 

In Nagbal, Zaradihar, Machama and the villages that fold into one another across the belt, apple blossoms shook under the weight of it. 

Vegetable patches flattened. 

Paddy fields took the blow in silence.

By daylight, the damage was visible everywhere.

The apple trees were still standing. 

But under them lay petals, broken stems and fruit knocked loose before its time.

For farmers here, this has become a familiar kind of morning: walking through an orchard after a storm, scanning branches for what remains, calculating loss before breakfast.

“The storm damaged orchards and vegetable fields across the area,” said Mudasir Ahmad, a farmer from Tral, standing beside rows of battered trees.

Across Kashmir, weather no longer arrives the way farmers remember it. 

Rain once meant relief – slow-moving clouds, steady drizzle, water soaking into the soil for days. 

Now, growers say, it often arrives with violence: hail, lightning, thunder, sudden winds. Shorter, harsher, and increasingly destructive.

“Hailstorms happened earlier too,” said Imran Ahmad, an orchardist from Shopian. “But not like this. There was a time when rain continued for days without causing much damage. Now almost every rainfall brings destruction.”

Kashmir’s economy has long leaned on horticulture with quiet dependence. 

Apples, especially, are more than fruit here. 

They are income, inheritance, school fees, dowries, loan repayments, and winter savings tied to a branch. 

Entire districts – Shopian, Kulgam, Sopore, parts of Anantnag – move with the rhythm of the apple season. 

Families measure time by bloom, spray, harvest and packing.

But in recent years, that calendar has become unreliable.

Repeated spells of rain and hail have struck orchards across north, central and south Kashmir over the past three months alone. 

Earlier in April, hailstorms damaged orchards in Kulgam and Shopian during full bloom. Friday’s storm was only the latest.

And for many growers, what the weather has not destroyed, debt threatens to.

“We spend lakhs of rupees on sprays and fertilisers through Kisan Credit Card loans,” said Ghulam Muhammad, a 65-year-old orchardist from Kulgam. “One hailstorm wipes everything out. This year it hit during flowering. Last year it came when the fruit was ready.”

The economics of loss here are brutal because they repeat.

Farmers borrow before the season begins – for pesticides, fungicides, labour, fertiliser, transport. 

They spend months tending orchards with no guarantee of return. When hail falls, the crop is damaged instantly, but the debt survives untouched.

There is no meaningful buffer between one storm and financial ruin.

Growers have for years demanded crop insurance tailored to Kashmir’s horticulture sector, but many say what exists remains either inaccessible, inadequate or impractical. 

Without it, compensation – when it comes – is slow, partial, or absent altogether.

Which means the burden falls back on the farmer.

Every time.

Ghulam Muhammad Banday, President of the Fruit Growers Association South Kashmir, said the losses from recent hailstorms have been severe.

“In some areas the damage was total,” he said. “In others, 70 to 80 percent.”

By some estimates, more than 100 villages in Shopian and Kulgam alone have been affected in recent months.

By Friday evening, fresh reports were coming in from Bandipora and Rafiabad in north Kashmir. 

In Watergam, Lessar, Dangiwacha and nearby villages, growers said developing apples had begun dropping from trees as hail battered branches.

“The hailstorm was so intense that apples started falling instantly,” said Muhammad Liyaqat, a fruit grower from the area.

In Shopian, the latest storm was the third this season.

The repetition is what farmers speak about most – not a single disaster, but accumulation. Storm after storm. Season after season. Loss without recovery.

And beneath all of it, a widening sense of abandonment.

“If the government wants to safeguard the horticulture sector, it must introduce a practical and affordable crop insurance scheme,” said Javed Ahmad, an orchardist from Shopian. “There is no effective safety net.”

Scientists and weather officials say the rise in such extreme events is tied to warming temperatures and shifting climate patterns. 

Forecasts can warn of broad weather systems moving across the Valley, but localised hailstorms, lightning strikes and cloudbursts remain difficult to predict.

For the farmer standing in an orchard at dawn, however, the reason matters less than the result.

What arrives from the sky cannot be controlled.

What many say should be controlled – and isn’t – is what happens after.

Over recent weeks, the weather has damaged more than crops. 

Lightning killed 107 sheep and goats in Pahalgam’s Lehandejan area. 

Another strike killed more than 60 livestock in Ganderbal. 

A cloudburst in Bandipora triggered flash floods and damaged roads in several villages.

But in orchards across Kashmir, the quieter damage lingers longest.

A blossom lost in May becomes income lost in autumn.

A bruised fruit becomes a reduced market rate.

A failed season becomes another year of borrowing.

And debt, unlike hail, does not melt by afternoon.

“Without insurance, farmers are left to suffer on their own,” said Suhail Ahmad. “We barely make ends meet to support our families.”

By late morning on Friday, the ice in Tral had begun to disappear. Water dripped from leaves. The orchards looked calmer from a distance, almost untouched.

Only up close could you see what had fallen.

About the Author

Amir Yaseen is a Srinagar-based journalist with an eye for the telling detail and an ear attuned to the cadences of Kashmir. He approaches news as narrative, locating the human story within the language of policy and progress and the quiet recalibration of everyday life.