The High Plains hail machine that's been grinding since the weekend didn't quit on June 24th — but it finally shared. The day ran 124 reports, 78 of them hail, and for the first time this week a real chunk of the ice fell well east of the Plains, up in the Upper Midwest.
Colorado just can't get out from under it. For the third day running it led the country — 35 reports — with a 2.75-inch stone at Fort Morgan, a brief tornado, and yet another wind hit at Akron (81 mph, after Monday's 113). The eastern plains have now absorbed three straight days of 2.75-to-4-inch hail; plenty of those roofs are past "go check it" and into "start the claim."
Right alongside, Nebraska took 20 reports and matched Colorado's biggest stone — another 2.75-incher, back at Wauneta, the same small town that ate 3.2-inch hail on the 21st. When one map dot gets cored twice in a week, that's not luck, that's a bullseye.
The new wrinkle was up north. Wisconsin logged 16 hail reports, every one of them stones, up to 1.75 inches around the Green Bay area, and Illinois caught the southern edge of it right in the Chicago suburbs — 1.5-inch hail at Lake in the Hills, plus a quick tornado. Suburban Chicago doesn't picture itself as hail country, which is exactly why those roofs tend to go unlooked-at.
If that's you — a metro homeowner who figures hail is somebody else's problem out west — this is the day to look anyway. An inch and a half won't total a roof, but it bruises shingles and shakes granules loose, and on a tired 15-year-old roof that's the difference between limping to 20 and a leak this winter. Climb up (or send someone) while the damage still has a date attached to it.
For the crews, the week split cleanly in two: the eastern Colorado–Nebraska plains, where the damage is now layered three deep, and the fresh Wisconsin–northern Illinois corridor that just opened up. Colorado's grip on the Top States for Hail board isn't loosening. Everybody else — the state-by-state board is below; find your town and see what the storm actually dropped on it.