500 Severe Reports, Grapefruit Hail
An incredible 387 reports of hail were submitted to the NWS yesterday. You can view and sort these on the WeatherMatrix StormMatrix site. Add to that 111 high wind reports and 6 tornadoes, and you've got nearly 500 severe weather reports in one day, covering 20 states.
It's been a while since we've seen this many severe reports in one day. I'm not sure how long, but this is how the outbreak fits into those with over 500 severe reports in 2006*:
April 2, 2006: 872 reports (368 hail, 418 wind, 86 tornado)
April 7, 2006: 871 reports (565 hail, 215 wind, 91 tornado)
March 13, 2006: 669 reports (402 hail, 127 wind, 140 tornado)
April 3, 2007: 586 reports (403 hail, 174 wind, 9 tornado)
May 25, 2006: 571 reports (309 hail, 254 wind, 8 tornado)
*NOTE: This paragraph was corrected on 4/5/07. I had omitted the 4/2/06 and 4/7/06 outbreaks and this is explained in this blog entry.
Here are some of the hail highlights from yesterday:
- 69 Reports of Golfball (1.75" Diameter) or Larger Hail
- 5 Reports of Softball-sized (2.75") or Larger Hail
- 2 Reports of Grapefruit-size (4.25") Hail
The lightning was one of the most impressive feature of yesterday's storms, with hundreds of thousands of strikes hitting the ground. Click below to load a loop of the lightning from AccuWeather.com Professional:
In addition to the radar loops I posted yesterday for Alabama and Tennessee, you can see the entire outbreak from beginning to end by downloading the loops from AccuWeather.com RadarPlus below:
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