slo’s THURSDAY 4/3 poll - Hail

[slo]

We’ve been having some strong storms in my area lately, which sometimes come with hail. Hail can cause a lot of damage to your house, car, shed and anything else that is outside. Hail comes in different sizes and I’m going to really hope that none of us have seen the largest, which is softball size - I can’t even imagine what kind of damage softball sized hail could cause . So I’m curious today…..

What is the largest sized hail you’ve experienced in your lifetime?



For Me…….Nickel sized hail. It was about 12 years ago and when it was falling my DD26 (14 at the time), put on her bike helmet and collected a bunch of it for herself and for us. She was really into weather at the same, so she found it cool. I wanted it so if I the hail caused roof damage, I’d have the proof of hail in the freezer. I also took pictures of it on the ground. We did have roof and gutter damage and the insurance did replace the roof. I never needed to show the hail or pictures - several houses in our area had the same problem.

 

[PollyannaMom]

I'd say the largest piece I've ever seen was also nickel-sized, but most of it was smaller (even in the same storm).

 

[Kitty 34]

I was out in Fort Collins, CO when that record breaking hail storm hit back in 1979. The craziest thing I've ever witnessed. It went on for 20 minutes. Definitely softball size.

 

[WDWEPCOT]

I picked golf ball but the hail that i got the other day was bigger than golf ball but not as big as an next size but I will say it’s the biggest hail I’ve ever seen and it was raining down like I have never seen in my life I I’ve never seen hail come down so hard so fast so much ever and I’ve been in two other tornadoes and I’ve seen a lot of hail because we get a lot of weird storms but I’ve never seen hail like this from this tornado and yeah it did a lot of damage but I literally thought it was gonna break all my windows
The insurance adjuster claims that the wind does more damage than the hail I’m not so sure about that because that hail did a number on my house - siding / window screens / window frames / roof / gutters / down spouts / my gazebo - the roof of that looks like someone it’s OK a hammer and beat it to death and all the wood for like the frame is just chipped up from the hail but I was thankful that it actually stayed bolted down because I didn’t think it was going to
Then two days later we got pea size hail from another storm it looked like it had snowed we had so much of that

Mother nature has not been very kind this spring she needs to calm down

 

[bobbiwoz]

We had damage in our Dayton OH NEIGHBORHOOD one year. Ping pong size,I believe.

 

[snowwite]

Tennis ball size once. It ruined cars. I did get a discount on a car with a few dents, the inside was brand new and the dealer didn’t bat an eye about dropping it for the cosmetic reason, We typically see more granular like maybe jelly belly sized.

 

[Wood Nymph]

I was just thinking about the size of hail when tennis ball size hail was predicted for a southern state. I don't think I've seen hail bigger than penny/dime size here in the Chicago area.

 

[BrianL]

I am really not sure, but last night it sounded huge!

 

[AppleDumpling]

It’s a rare occurrence around here. I can recall once around quarter size, and the rest smaller.

 

[Kathryn Merteuil]

I think quarter size is the biggest I remember ever seeing thankfully.

 

[Meriweather]

We very rarely have hail......the largest I think I've experienced is penny size.

 

[NAB]

I said quarter but could have been bigger. It was big enough to put dents in the roof of my last car.

The weather has been crazy with so much snow/ freezing rain here . People have no power for almost a week now. 2 freezing rain events in one week terrible. Now today it is almost summer temps. Just a roller coaster.

 

[TiggerTrigger]

Softball size...although the memories are more in pictures and impacted relics.

We were living in Ohio in 1974 on the "Day of 100 Tornadoes" super outbreak. I believe there were actually 148 confirmed tornadoes from the system, including a combined total of 30 F4s and F5s. We were close enough to the Sayler Park F5 that we got hail of that magnitude. It's going to sound nuts, but my mom put a large pot on her head so she could run outside really quickly to collect a few samples of this enormous hail. She put the hail in the freezer so my dad could inspect it and photograph it later. I remember the giant hail stones residing in there for a while after. Oh, and she still has the pot...which is heavily dented from the massive hail.

 

[design_mom]

When I was a kid, we had large-ish hail once (in the nickel to quarter size range). Since then, it's been pretty small. We've had hail twice in the last week, but it's all been pea-sized.

 

[amcnj]

I am going to guess the nickel/quarter range. Lots of cars were damaged by it, a real problem for car dealer inventories. The hail started accumulating on the ground too.

 

[soccerdad72]

Maybe quarter sized. We had a pretty bad hailstorm a few years ago - it got us our new roof, as there was enough damage that our insurance approved it for replacement with just the deductible.

 

[Dan Murphy]

I'd say maybe dime/penny size. That can be damaging. We had one storm, maybe 30 years ago, that dented all our house's original aluminum siding. Insurance covered the replacement vinyl siding.

Yesterday, you guys in NW Indiana, @slo, got it worse than us in NW Chicago area. We had buckets of cooling rain during the early afternoon time, which helped to temper the instability the was in the air all around the Chicago area. We were in the clear as NW Indiana was getting hammered in the late afternoon. Hope you did okay yesterday.

 

[disneychrista]

I honestly don’t know. We had two major hailstorms last year covered my yard and road. It looked like it snowed. But it wasn’t large hailstones just a lot of it and for an extended period of time.

 

[cabanafrau]

A few years back we had a storm roll through with hail and I did actually see a couple afterwards that were golf ball size. Luckily it was only two or three amidst the rest which was significantly smaller. We were very fortunate not to have damage ourselves, although quite a few neighbors in our neighborhood and surrounding communities unfortunately suffered damage.

Yesterday and last night we were dealing with the same storm system OP is likely talking about, with freezing rain, hail, buckets of rain and bouts of thunder and lightning. Overnight things got very active again. Thunder rolled overnight here for three to four hours and the rain was a deluge. We could probably open a marina in the backyard this morning.

 

[Micca]

I voted ping pong size, but I'm not sure about that. We had a significant hail storm about a year ago and people are still in the process of having their roofs replaced.