She claimed that the paddy planted on around five ropanis of land was destroyed by the hailstone. “I had hoped to harvest more rice this year as compared to previous since the paddy was growing well. However, everything was destroyed in the disaster. I feel like crying when I look at my desert-like farmland.”

 “We are worried about how to sustain throughout the year,” bemoaned Ratnadevi Malla of Chain. Her paddy was also destroyed by the disaster. According to the District Agriculture Development Office (DADO), hailstones on Saturday afternoon knocked down paddy planted on about 900 hectares of farmland particularly in Srinagar and Karkibada. Surya Hamal, assistant technician at the DADO said that more than 800 metric tonnes of rice were destroyed by the hailstones in the two VDCs.  

With the destruction of ready-to-harvest paddy, shortage of rice looms in the district. Mugu often faces rice shortage due to low production of rice and a lack of transport to supply daily essentials.

Now, locals fear that they may face rice shortage this year too. According to them, they had decided to harvest paddy collectively after celebrating Tihar festival. “But the hailstones that occurred only for 15 minutes destroyed all ripen paddy,” said Gagane Buda of Karkibada.

Locals said that the natural disaster killed paddy planted on farmland of about 200 families in Srikot VDC alone. “We fear that shortage of rice may start looming early this year. All ripen paddy was destroyed by the hailstones,” he complained. A team including Padam Bahadur Rawal, acting district president of the Nepali Congress and Dharma Bahadur Shahi, district vice chairman of CPN-UML, inspected the affected area recently. Chief District Officer Shambhu Prasad Regmi said that he directed the DADO to send a team to the affected area to keep data of damaged crops.