Insurance Adjusters Cringe: Huge Destructive Hail Hit Three Big Metro Areas Last Night

A hole in a home's ceiling west of San Antonio,
Texas. Hail was big enough to punch through
the roof of the building and into the living room.
Photo via Twitter @vortexrfd 

Hail the size of baseballs or even bigger slammed parts of three good sized metropolitan areas last night, surely creating a very expensive disaster.  

The areas hit were the San Antonio, Texas area; Dallas-Fort Worth - especially the northern suburbs; and Oklahoma City, especially its southern suburbs around Norman. 

One person suffered a head injury near Norman as a result of the hail, the NOAA's Storm Prediction Center noted in its daily storm summary. 

Since the hail was widespread and hit populated areas, this could well be yet another $1 billion plus disaster. 

Hurricanes and tornadoes get all the dazzling news coverage, but hail is often the most expensive kind of weather in the United States. Insurance claims for hail damage routinely pile up to around $10 billion annually. 

Huge numbers of cars, windows, roofs. skylights, siding and landscaping in the three metro areas affected by the supercell thunderstorms were damaged and destroyed. Insurance adjusters are going to be incredibly busy. 

In some cases, giant hail pierced through roofs.  Social media photos from Sabinal, Texas, west of San Antonio showed holes in a home's ceiling where hail bigger than softballs crashed through the roof, attic and into the living room. 

Another image showed a Texas Honda dealership with broken windshields on all the cars on the lot. 

Photos from Norman, Oklahoma show the effects of baseball-sized wind-driven hail. Windows were shattered and window shades were shredded. 

Large hail driven by high winds, shredded
this window and window shade in Normam,
Oklahoma last night. Photo via Twitter by
@marekcornett

Near Fort Worth, one person with a sense of humor, demonstrating the size of the hail, took a photo of a cinnamon bun next to a similarly sized hailstone. 

A few tornadoes were reported with some of the hail-producing supercells, but those twisters seemed to hit more remote areas and caused relatively little damage.

Today, severe storms are a good possibility, mostly in a band from northern Mississippi up the Appalachian chain as far north as the northern suburbs of New York City.  

Weather patterns remain favorable for more severe weather over the weekend and next week over swaths of the South and Midwest.

VERMONT RAIN

The Green Mountain State won't see any hail anytime soon, but we're finally getting quite a bit of needed rain.  

Yesterday's showers produced roughly a third to a half inch of rain, with locally higher amounts. Another good slug of rain should come through later today and tonight with an additional half inch to an inch of rain 

Showers tomorrow will add a bit to the total, and more weather disturbances next week could deposit even more precipitation.

Some favored high elevation places in Vermont could see a total of up to three inches of rain over the next seven days. Most of us will probably see well over an inch in that time period. Which is great news with the current low water tables and rainfall deficit that stubbornly lingers. 

The only trouble with this is there won't be any long periods in which we can get outside in nice weather, but we'll take it.

Another problem is that dreaded "S" word. It'll get cold enough for some snow Friday night, mostly at elevations above 1,500 feet, but a few snowflakes could make it down lower in elevation than that. Some mountain peaks could get several inches of snow out of this. 

It won't be nearly as bad as the snowstorm that hit Vermont last week, though.