Hail Storms:Tales of Awe, or Whoa?

[Steve Miller]

I'm in the "avoid hail like the plague" group. I have to say the most prolific hail experience for me was Mulvane (6-12-04). I have seen hail similar in size but I've never been close enough to hear it fall. Seeing and hearing objects falling out of the sky that as large as that is freaky to say the least.
The stone below was being held by the gentleman who owned the home in the background. He said he was missing windows from the house and we could see divots in the yard. I'm sure the roof was totaled too.
What a day, overall...

 

[Bill Tabor]

I've been in small hail numerous times, intermittent moderate hail many times, large hail a few, and giant hail once.

One large hail was on March 10th 2000 in near Llano, Tx on an LP supercell with Gene Moore. We captured two pretty tornadoes that day. Gene had a couple of large rings busted on his windshield of his Yukon. That hail at times was near baseball in size (~3 inch) but the majority was 2 inch. I thought we had a picture of Gene's windshield but I guess that was on video:
http://www.chaseday.com/llanoco00.htm


Another large hail was March 30th 2007 near Camp Wood, Tx: http://www.tornadoxtreme.com/Chases_By_Year/2007_Chases/March_30_07/march_30_07.html
Here I managed to quickly get out of the majority of the hail before my vehicle got destroyed. David Drummond at my initial location did not fare as well and much of his vehicle (light bars, etc) was destroyed.

My worst giant hail experience (like Shane) was May 12th 2005 with baseball to some possible 4" softball sized stones which were being thrown from an RFD jet that was feeding into the back of a tornadic circulation. It was pretty intense. http://www.tornadoxtreme.com/Chases_By_Year/2005_Chases/May_12th_05/may_12th_05.html (see pics of my windshield and vehicles damage that day)
It completely damaged my front windshield on my Tahoe to where I couldn't see out with many holes featuring rain falling through. One piece of hail managed to fly through the glass and leave a large welt on my left arm as I attempted to pull further into the core and into what I thought might be smaller hail. Problem was the hook I was in was too large to drive out of quickly. I would have been better to just sit with the back of the vehicle facing the large hail and wait it out. At the time my partners thought a piece of glass had cut my eye when the hail hit the windshield. I now believe that it was simply high blood pressure that caused a small capillary to burst in the side of my eye. I did have hail goggles on, but the band was loose so as I drove they were sitting crooked a bit on my face.

I've been in lots of hail - probably most that I forget. Usually it is only a few stones as I escape. I chase tornadoes and so really I try and avoid the hail, because giant hail can really ruin your chase and your whole day. It was a pain in the ass to clean up my chase vehicle and replace glass plus time and costs. You can never find and get rid of all the glass. I still today find tiny pieces of glass on my notebook computer touch pad from 2005. For these reasons I try and avoid the really large hail while chasing but will punch cores and take some chances in order to get to the tubes. I now have a shiny new red chase vehicle. It may be tough to take it into the stones.

 

[Wesley Luginbyhl]

I missed the tornadoes on May 12, 2005 near South Plains, but I got trapped the hail in Quitaque as the storm moved east. I only recieved 2 dents because I got really lucky and got an open spot under the covering at the Allsup's as I drove through town. I ended up filming 15 minutes of hail video while sitting there. The ground was covered with a couple inches of hail ranging from baseball to pea size when it finally stopped. My AWD drive car was sliding everywhere when I tried to get out of there. It is the one day I am glad I missed the tornadoes, because my windshield live to see another day. Here is the video I took from the Allsup's gas station - May 12, 2005 Hail Video .

Biggest stone seen so far though would be May 23 this year near Fort Supply, OK. I am just glad I missed the hail this day.

 

[Dean Baron]

the coolest experience i have with hail was this past summer on May 30th. it was nothing more than quarter to maybe few golf ball size but i was in it for a good 20 minutes driving down an interstate. it was like driving through a melting hockey rink. other than that, i have never really experienced big hail while chasing, we have had a few storms produce up to golf ball size at our house, but nothing like the central plains gets.
from May 30th:

 

[David Wolfson]

By far my best was the May 5, 2006, Seminole/Patricia storm Laura mentioned: http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/showpost.php?p=105080&postcount=7
Picture of the hail: http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/showpost.php?p=105085&postcount=9

 

[Tony Laubach]

As David said about, Seminole, Texas on May 5, 2006 served me the most insane hailstorm I had been in... I won't rehash the story of that day, but I had some hefty stones...

But my best hail experience was the following year (June 7) in Wisconsin Rapids of all places... Chris Collura and I got treated to a "hailuva" treat when we arrived in town.

The hail triple feature of 2008 (Mar 30, Mar 31, Apr 3) was awesome, too! I finally put some trophies in my van and ended up smashing out the windshield. Those were some fun days!

I love hail, its almost an obsession; a good hail day will rank up there with tornado just about everytime!

 

[Bob Hartig]

Golf ball size on June 7, 2007, in Wisconsin. Could have had much larger if we had cared to drop south, but based on the philosophy that it's nice to have a windshield, my chase buddy and I figured, naaaah!

 

[Chris Hayes]

The most spectacular hailstorms I've experienced were in May 2004 and May 2005. The May 2004 hailstorm didnt occur on a chase it occured at home! I was getting ready to go to my mom's to do something and I noticed a little storm to the sw on the radar. I didnt think anything of it, it wasnt much so I didnt take my camcorder with me (BIG MISTAKE). After a little while at my mom's house I saw that we were put under a severe thunderstorm warning. I went out back to watch the storm and the hail started before the rain. First a stone here and there, then sheets of hail up to the size of golfballs accompanied by 60mph + winds bringing down pieces of trees. The storm lasted for about 5-10 minutes. After it was over every house in our neighborhood and surrounding neighborhoods had siding turned to swiss cheese and roofs with destroyed shingles and thousands of cars needing dent repair. The biggest hailstone form the storm was around baseball size about a mile from my house.

The May 22, 2005 hailstorm occured in the Wichita area. We went out for a midnight chase to do lightning photography of a storm near ICT. As we were going along I was watching the storm on my laptop and noticed more storms starting to go up all over the place. After watching that occur for about twenty minutes I decided it wasnt going to be good for lightning photography and to head back. On the way back to ICT we got nailed by hail 3 times. The biggest stone we took was a baseball which caused an impressive dent in the side of the truck which is still there to this day.

 

[Steve Miller TX]

After many years of dodging the big hail cores, I got nailed twice this year. Once was west of Pratt, KS on May 26. Had some baseballs ding me pretty good. The lesson learned was that if your chase partner (in this case David Drummond) who is monitoring radar and GPS says not once, but several times that it's time to go, you obey. There were NO east road options and I thought we were only a couple of miles from the east highway option. It was more like 7 miles. LOL!!

Then on June 17, I inadvertently found myself in an artillery barrage of gorilla hail from baseball to grapefruit size east of Muleshoe, TX. I was trying to cut around on the SW side of the hook and at what I thought was a safe distance as I've done many times before. As soon as I saw the first monster chunk of ice explode all over the road in front of me, I immediately did a u-turn...but the barrage had ensued. I just knew I was going to lose every window as I uttered some pretty colorful metaphors. It seemed like forever to drive about a mile back out of it. Fortunately, I lucked out and only ended up with 3 craters in my roof...one of them the size of those you'd find on the moon. ;-)

 

[Nathan Edwards]

The biggest for me was at Roswell NM, earlier this year (May 5th I think) from a great mothership supercell. Primarily golf balls with the odd couple to tennisball sized as I got caught out right at the southern tip of the storm. Seeing most of the cars that came through the core, I was glad to not smash any windows, although I had numerous dents and the bodywork on the wingmirror popped off and blew away. Most of the cars which came through the core were trashed by baseballs.

With the exception of this, I've not had any other experience of large hail, and don't plan to in the future. Insurance companies can be a pain. The only reason I got caught out in this case was because the electric window on the drivers side got stuck down and I had to sort that out and did not pay full attention to the incoming storm. I'm glad I got the window raised though as it could have been quite painful riding out that hailstorm with an open window.

 

[Mike Kovalchick]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndkaKw3LWXc

This supercell back in May of 2004 at Scott State Park in Western Kansas was like no other I've ever seen.

It started out as a LP storm with incredible inflow and produced one or two small tornadoes.

It then back built and suddenly let loose the hail that had been seemingly held suspended in the updraft for a good part of the afternoon. It remained stationary resulting in large hail falling for a couple of hours. I didn't think it would ever stop. The only saving grace was the hail was on the "mushy" side and exploded upon impact.

I'm not sure really how big some of the hail was but based on the splashes in the lake..some of it looked like volley ball size! I'm pretty sure it killed all the ducks/geese that were on the lake just prior to the storm.

After the storm finally drifted away, I witnessed the best intracloud lightning display I've ever seen. The wake depression/outflow winds howled half the night as we fool heartedly camped there which resulted in broken/snapped off tent poles!

 

[Jason Young]

Mine would be the March 31 , Davis Okla. storm from this year . Got stupied and drove into a 20 minute 1" to 1.5" hail storm and could not find cover. Second would be a 2" hail storm in Sidney Neb. back in May 06 .

 

[Jeremy Lemanski]

Baseballs a couple years ago, took out the back wiper and front windshield on my suv. Would have done more if not for an open barn that i ducked the truck into until it passed.

 

[Stephen Levine]

When I lived in Ohio in the 1970's I began my storm chasing. Hail of any significant size was quite rare in SW Ohio and the exceptions I never experienced. Thus, I regularly and freely core punched hail whenever and where ever I could find it. The experience was utterly orgasmic. I loved every minute of it, and was moved to tears to see hail as large as nickels fall, not something I would get to see every year. Even hail sized beneath "severe" criteria was a real joy and blessing for me to see; I felt great fortune to experience all that a thunderhead had to offer.

Out here in the Prairie States, it's a whole new ball game. Storms out here are a different beast, and when I get into hail dime sized or bigger, my heart begins to pound while my mind asks "what's next? golf balls? baseballs? Just how big is this going to get?" and I drive the "hail" out of there.

In Prairie storm chasing, for me safety comes first, and I will avoid hail as much as possible. The TV video I saw a few years ago of those two MN chaser's vehicle getting completely trashed by hail and them screaming for their lives, bailing out and hiding under the car still sits in my mind.

I enjoy smaller sized hail, and would love to watch a huge hail stoned storm from the safety of a parking garage.

Many times I have thought "if only hail had the consistency of ping-pong balls..."

Hail roars emanating from high in the clouds fascinate me; I have experienced this two or three times, including from a pearly thunderhead tower thrusting into clear blue sky. The roar sounded as if it were a distant boiler.

My biggest hail was in 1998 during a night time storm in Medford OK, where it was the size of pool table balls. Luckily we found and bailed out into an open car port - the owners not home. The storm, complete with varying sizes of hail, 60 MPH winds, and tornado sirens as well as a power outage lasted a good hour or so. Just as we turned onto the street and drove away the occupants of our temporary shelter returned.

In 1997, one of my clients found a baseball sized stone in Harper Co. Ks at least 1 hour after the storm ended.

 

[Rob Wadsworth]

So many great stories, accounts, and pictures.

I noticed that the hail shapes varied.
What is the explanation for the jagged vs smooth/round?
How/why did they form differently?
The round hail of Laubach's shows a collection of marble-sized hail mashed together and rubbing and banging ('regurgitating updraft' LOL?) into each other accounts for the sphere shape.
Bur what about the spike shapes?
One contrinous updraft to the top of the storm - and then dumped out the back of the storm?

BTW-The hail that fell in Storm Lake this year was shaped like 3/4"-1.1" red blood cells; kinda donut shaped and most if not all seemed to be shaped accordingly.