Never heard of this practice. But it seems to be a thing yes.
Turns out it was Vonnegut again.
The scientific attempts to mitigate or suppress hailfalls began in the 1950s, a few years after Schaefer (1946) and Vonnegut (1947) discovered the means to increase the ice crystal concentration in clouds by using dry ice or silver iodide (AgI) particles, and consequently to interfere with the natural precipitation processes.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0169809515003774