Two days running, the map coughed up a monster — 3.25-inch hail at Fond du Lac on the 1st, a 3.5-inch stone at Maynard on the 2nd. July 3rd is where that streak snapped. Out of 159 reports, the biggest hailstone anywhere in the country was 2 inches, and it took two separate storms — one in the Black Hills, one in western Kansas — to even reach that. The giant ice took the day off; the wind picked up the slack.
This was a wind day — 91 of those 159 reports were gusts, strung from the Upper Midwest out to the coast. Illinois logged 22, nearly all wind, and Michigan took the day's hardest blow, a 79 mph gust at Portage, inside a 14-report wind run across the state. From there the line handed off east — New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio all catching gusts as it rolled toward the Atlantic.
The hail that did fall packed into one place: the South Dakota Black Hills, the backbone of the state's 27 reports. A tight swath ran the high country from Spearfish down through Hill City and Custer to Dudley, then spilled across the line into northeast Wyoming, where Osage caught the day's co-biggest stone — a 2-incher — next to Sundance, Hulett, and Devils Tower. The swath above traces that core as it rolled over Dudley on the South Dakota side. The other 2-inch stone came down a long way south, in western Kansas at Voda, beside a 1.75-incher at WaKeeney.
Two inches is the size people talk themselves out of. It isn't the grapefruit ice that caves a skylight and makes the news — it's the quieter kind that still cracks a shingle mat, dents soft metal, and strips granules in patches, then sits quiet until the roof gives up a season later. If that Black Hills swath or the Kansas cell crossed your place, don't call it from the driveway. Get somebody who climbs for a living onto the actual slope while the date still points clean at this storm.
And keep in mind it was two different storms in one day, and they don't sign their work the same way — wind hits the seams and edges, hail hammers the broad flat of the roof. Which one crossed you decides where to look first. Nebraska caught a little of everything — hail, wind, and the day's lone tornado — and northeast Colorado picked up a smaller hail pocket around Sterling.
For the crews, the clean canvass is the Black Hills — northeast Wyoming and western South Dakota — where the hail is concentrated and a day old; the wind work is real but spread thin from Illinois to the Northeast. Where the season's big stones keep stacking up stays on the Top States for Hail board. Everybody else — the state-by-state board is below; find your county and see which report landed nearest your roof.