After a solid week of 100-plus-report days, the engine finally idled down. June 28th mustered just 41 reports — the thinnest day in over a week — and what was left came in loose and scattered rather than as one mean line. No 89 mph gust, no 2.75-inch stones. Just a tired storm track spitting out its last few before the pattern broke.
What activity there was stayed up on the Northern Plains. South Dakota led with 15 reports, fourteen of them wind, smeared across the open country out around Interior — gusty, but the disorganized kind, not the roof-peeling wall that came through on the 27th. Most of it was the sort of wind that rattles a loose ridge cap and calls it a day.
The hail, what there was of it, slid east off the Plains and into the cornbelt. The day's biggest stone landed at Delmar, Iowa — a 2-incher — and Iowa, North Dakota, and Nebraska all topped out right at that same 2-inch mark in their own little pockets. Spread thin across four states, but a 2-inch stone is a 2-inch stone wherever it falls: that's past the noise stage and into cracked mats and dented gutters.
Two tornadoes touched down about as far apart as the map allows — a brief one at Orrin, up in North Dakota, and a lone spin-up way down in Florida, the usual summer sea-breeze business. Off on its own out in the West Texas desert, Fort Stockton logged a 75 mph gust with nothing much around it.
Here's the trap on a quiet day: it's exactly the kind nobody bothers to check. The headlines this week were the big Colorado and Dakota hail, so a homeowner near Delmar or one of those scattered Dakota and Nebraska dots figures the 28th was a nothing day and skips the look. But 2 inches doesn't care that it was a slow news night. If a stone that size came down on your place, it bruised shingles and shook granules loose whether the rest of the country noticed or not. If you're not the climb-a-ladder type, this is the week to have somebody who is take a walk on the roof.
For the crews, I'll be straight — this one's thin pickings. The South Dakota wind is low-end and the hail is four states' worth of one-off 2-inch pockets, Delmar being the cleanest of them. Uncrowded work, if you're already in the neighborhood. The season's running hail tally still lives on the Top States for Hail board. Everybody else — scroll to your state in the table below and see what actually landed near you.