Hail Season: When and Where Large Hail Falls

There is no single national date, which is why these pages are built state by state. The season sweeps north and west across the year: the Gulf states open in late February, the southern Plains peak in May, the corn belt in June, and the Dakotas, Minnesota and the northern Rockies in July. Arizona is on a different calendar again, with a season that does not open until July because its hail comes from the North American monsoon rather than the spring storm track.

By severe hail days a year across 1996 to 2025, the leaders are Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa and the rest of the Plains. Read that carefully though: a state day count records a day when severe hail fell anywhere inside the state, so a large state accumulates more days than a small one for reasons that have nothing to do with the weather. On a per point basis NOAA says something different: "While Florida has the most thunderstorms, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming usually have the most hail storms. Why? The freezing level in the Florida thunderstorms is so high, the hail often melts before reaching the ground."

The National Weather Service's own definition: "Severe thunderstorms are officially defined as storms that are capable of producing hail that is an inch or larger or wind gusts over 58 mph. Hail this size can damage property such as plants, roofs and vehicles." The Storm Prediction Center adds a second bar for significant severe hail at 2 inches, roughly a hen egg. Everything on this site is counted against those two thresholds and no others, because they are the thresholds the reports were collected under.

Because the report count is mostly a measure of how many people were watching. Nationally, reports of 1 inch or larger went from 4,811 in 1996 to 12,451 in 2011, while the number of days carrying such a report went from 216 to 214. Storm chasing, smartphones, social media and a larger trained spotter network all added reports without adding storms. Counting days removes most of that, which is why days lead every page here and report counts appear only alongside the caveat.

Forty six. A state has a page here when severe hail was reported in at least 25 of the 30 years and the state recorded at least 60 severe hail days in total. Delaware and Rhode Island each saw severe hail in 20 of the 30 years, Alaska in 6 and Hawaii in 4, and below that line a monthly distribution is noise rather than a season, so this hub carries their real numbers instead of a page.

Because a severe hail day means something completely different in Texas than in Washington. Where a state gets 30 or more severe hail days a year and 5 or more days with stones of 2 inches or larger, the page leads with frequency and the peak week. Where hail is an annual event on 10 to 30 days, the page leads with the season window. Below 10 days a year the page leads with how seldom hail arrives and carries months rather than a peak week, since at that frequency the busiest week of the year holds under one day.

No. There is no hail specific NWS product, and there never has been. Hail is warned inside the Severe Thunderstorm Warning, which carries a maximum hail size tag and a hail threat field saying whether the hail was seen or inferred from radar. This site reads those tags live and shows them exactly as the issuing office wrote them. Severe Thunderstorm Watches carry no hail size tag, so a watch panel on this site shows the area under watch and nothing about stone size.

That call belongs to the National Weather Service forecast offices and the Storm Prediction Center, the bodies with the mandate and the radar to say a storm is dangerous right now. These pages count 30 years of the agency's own reports and show any active warning verbatim with the office that issued it. For anything forward looking, weather.gov and spc.noaa.gov.