Most days the storm reports smear across half the map. July 1st did the opposite — it aimed. Of 103 reports nationwide, the day's whole story sat in one place: Wisconsin, which took 33 reports, 32 of them hail, in a tight bullseye across the east-central part of the state while everybody else got scattered wind.
The headline stone — and the biggest anywhere in the country yesterday — was a 3.25-inch monster at Fond du Lac, baseball-and-then-some. It didn't fall alone: the same train of cells dropped 2.5-inch hail at Rosendale, 2.25-inch at Plymouth, and another 2.25-incher clear over at Sheboygan, cutting a hail corridor from the lake country to the Lake Michigan shore. At three-plus inches you're well past bruised shingles — that's hail that shatters back windows, dents metal roofs and gutters, and leaves shingle mats fractured under the surface where the damage hides for months.
Away from Wisconsin the day was quieter and messier. Iowa ran 17 reports — mostly wind, plus the day's only two tornadoes — and South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas traded gusts down the Plains, the hardest a 79 mph blow at Clarendon, Texas. Enough to knock limbs and lift a few loose shingles, but nothing with Wisconsin's teeth.
A few stones turned up where you don't expect them — 1.75-inch hail down in Alabama at Hokes Bluff, and a lone one way up at Essex Center, Vermont. But if there's a single place to pay attention today, it's that Fond du Lac–Sheboygan line. Three-inch hail doesn't leave a maybe: if it crossed your roof, the roof took damage, flat out. The only question is whether you catch it now or meet it as a ceiling stain in October.
So don't take a quick look from below and call it fine. Get somebody up on the slope, get dated photos, and start the claim while the storm date is fresh and the adjusters aren't yet buried. For the crews, this is the rare tight canvass in a season full of sprawling ones — the hail is packed into a handful of Wisconsin counties, it's big, and it's easy to prove. Where the season's heaviest ice keeps piling up is tracked on the Top States for Hail board. Everybody else — scan the state-by-state table below and see which reports landed nearest you.