hailstorms cause an average of $15 billion in damage to homes, cars, and crops each year.

This finding holds up well next to a radar-based climatology for 2007-2010 published in the journal Weather and Forecasting, which found that “June is clearly the leading month for severe hail.” (See a summary of the article.) took place in May, 24.9% in June, 21.9% in July, and 18.0% in August (in other words, 85% during this four-month time period). Flora, in his classic book Hailstones of the United States (1956), analyzed hailstorm events for the period 1944-1953 and found that 20.0% of all hailstorms in the U.S. normally occur during the months of May to August as opposed to tornado frequency peaking in April and May. history, along with a summary of the largest hailstones yet observed in the United States. hail season at hand, here is a recap (portions of which appeared in a blog entry I posted in April 2018) of the costliest and deadliest hailstorms in U.S. On Friday night, May 22, 2020, a hailstone of 5.33” diameter was reported in Burkburnett, Texas (the same hailstone shown in this Facebook post). (That hailstone was said to have actually been 11” in diameter before a portion of it melted prior to being officially measured.) However, the Argentine hailstone will likely never become an official record, since its size was estimated only from video evidence and not from any first-hand measurements.

record holder, an 8-inch-diameter stone collected near Vivian, South Dakota on July 23, 2010. If verified, the Argentine hailstone would surpass the U.S. The Weather Channel’s Chris Dolce has a summary of the event, which has been documented in a February paper for the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society entitled “ Gargantuan Hail in Argentina.” The authors propose that hailstones larger than 6” in diameter be classified as “gargantuan”. Recently, an investigation into a hailstorm that took place in Villa Carlos Paz, Cordoba Province, Argentina on February 8, 2018, reported that a hailstone some 9.3 inches in diameter may have fallen during a storm there. The hail in this photograph, however, drifted this deep after floodwaters washed it into these giant heaps in a low-lying area. Above: Hail can accumulate to remarkable depths when a storm becomes stationary over one place for a period of time.

Weather underground hail history