Hail Storms:Tales of Awe, or Whoa?

[Brian Stertz]

Rich and Ryan Thies and myself got pummelled by a vicious round of baseball and some larger hail bombs about 2 miles north of Tulia last April. This was on the north side of the tornadic circulation and was some of the biggest continuous big hail drop I have experienced as a chaser. It pales in comparison to the South Plains TX situation though. That had to be one of the more wicked hail bomb events that chasers have gone through with very little places to hide. Rich and I had to leave early that chase so that he could get on back to STL. Glad we missed that disaster.....even if it meant not seeing that dusty tornado.

 

[Ron Riemersma]

June 22, 2003. Aurora, NE. I was chasing alone, going visual (without data and without great visibility), in Northeast NE. I'm on the side of the road thinking "bust" when a caravan of chasers fly by me heading South. They obviously know something and I recognized a couple who waved me on, so I followed. We punch through the Aurora storm with only a few dents, and missed the record hail from that day. I never re-traced the steps to see how close we were to the monster hail, but I'm thinking we got lucky that day.