So much for the quiet spell. The 28th gave us 41 sleepy reports; two days later the sky made up for it. June 29th came in at 182 reports — the loudest day in two weeks — and it went after the Northern Plains and Upper Midwest with everything in the bag at once: giant hail, a freak wind gust, and five tornadoes.
Nebraska caught the most stones — 30 hail reports, up to a 3-incher at Scotia — but North Dakota owned the single biggest, a 4-inch softball at Briarwood. That's the size that punches skylights and cracks a shingle mat clean through. Minnesota took its own 3-inch hit at Moorhead, and between the four hardest-hit states the whole run of hail sat in claim territory, not cosmetic.
The meanest number came out of South Dakota, which led the country with 48 reports and a straight-line gust clocked at 131 mph at Highmore. That isn't a thunderstorm gust — that reads like a hurricane eyewall, and it does what a strong tornado does: peels roofs to the deck and rolls grain bins across a field. South Dakota also spun up four of the day's five tornadoes.
When hail gets to three and four inches the damage usually isn't shy about showing itself — but the mistake people make is judging it from the ground and calling it fine. A cracked mat doesn't leak the week of the storm; the fracture sits there quiet and lets go months later, long after anybody thinks to blame a June hailstorm. If you're anywhere under this one, get a real set of eyes up on the slope and start the paperwork now — the claim window opens the day the stone falls, not the day the ceiling stains.
For the crews, this is the day you reroute for: four states of fresh, well-logged damage, with Nebraska and the Dakotas holding the heaviest hail. It won't stay fresh long once the next system smears the evidence, so the early trucks win. The season's hail leaderboard is over on the Top States for Hail board. Everybody else — the county-by-county breakdown is below; look up your town and see exactly what came down on it.