If you live or roof anywhere on the High Plains, June 22nd is one to circle. It was an ice day at heart — 94 of the 167 reports were hail — but the storms that dropped it were violent enough to throw a 113 mph gust on the side.
Colorado ran the whole show: 55 reports, and it brought both barrels. The biggest stone of the day, a 4-inch monster, fell at Joes out on the eastern plains — that's grapefruit ice, the size that doesn't dent a roof so much as end it, punching through shingles and cracking the deck underneath. Then a few counties over, a 113 mph gust tore through Akron. That's not a thunderstorm gust, that's a wind that takes the roof off and argues with the walls — on par with a strong tornado, just spread across a wider path.
The hail belt ran north from there. Nebraska logged 23 stones, up to 2.75 inches around Scottsbluff; Wyoming took 30 reports with 2-inch hail and four of the day's tornadoes near Sleepy Hollow; and South Dakota filled in with 13 hail reports, biggest 1.75 inches near the Black Hills. When four states share one afternoon of 2-inch-and-up hail, that's a lot of roofs that just quietly lost a decade.
The exception sat down south: Oklahoma ran a wind day instead, 29 of its 31 reports gusts as a separate line raked through the Moore area. The rest of the tornado count — 12 in all — was scattered thin, a touchdown apiece across Colorado, Nebraska, Texas, and a couple back east.
Here's the thing about a 4-inch day: there's no maybe about it. Hail that big isn't a "watch for granule loss" situation — it's the kind that totals a roof outright, and your neighbor's caved-in skylight is the tell. If you're out near Joes, Akron, Scottsbluff, or anywhere a 2-inch report landed near your zip, this is a get-it-looked-at-now day, not a wait-and-see one — the bigger the stone, the shorter the runway before the claim conversation gets complicated.
For the crews, a day like this can book a chunk of the season: eastern Colorado is the obvious first stop, then the Scottsbluff and Wyoming pockets north. Colorado just bulled its way up the Top States for Hail board with that one. Everybody else — the full state-by-state counts are in the table below; find your county and see how big the stones got next to you.