Forty reports isn't a busy day — but seven of them were tornadoes, and six of those touched down in one state. Minnesota ran the show on the 6th, not with big ice or a wall of wind, but with a rash of spin-ups across the farm country while the rest of the country mostly sat still.
None of those Minnesota tornadoes came off a classic Plains supercell — they were the quick, ragged kind that drop out of a line, chew up a field or a treeline, and rope out before a chaser can get a tripod set. Minnesota's twelve reports led every other state, tornadoes plus a little wind and a couple of hail stones topping out around an inch and a half near Gary. Weak or not, a tornado that clips a barn or a house is nobody's idea of weak from underneath it — if one came near you, the damage is the kind you want an insurer's eyes on before you touch a thing.
The hail, what there was of it, split between two ends of the map. Down in east Texas a cluster around Emory dropped the day's co-biggest stone — 1.75 inches — and way up in South Dakota, Witten matched it to the quarter-inch. That's the exact size where a roof stops shrugging hail off: an inch and three-quarters bruises the shingle mat and knocks granules loose in patches, even if the yard looks fine an hour later.
South Dakota carried the wind, too — a 71 mph gust at Dudley was the hardest blow anybody logged, part of a handful of gusts across the state. Wyoming picked up a few more around Casper, and small hail turned up as far off as Arkansas, near Natural Steps. Scattered, is the word for all of it — heat-of-the-day storms, not a system.
Here's what a day like this rewards: paying attention when nobody else is. Nothing on the 6th made a national headline, which means if a storm crossed your roof, you're the only one who knows to look. Don't judge it from the ground and don't trust a dry ceiling — 1.75-inch hail and a spin-up both leave damage that hides for a season. A quick inspection now, while it's obvious what caused it, beats guessing in the fall.
For the crews, the honest map is thin: the cleanest hail is that east-Texas pocket around Emory and the lone South Dakota stone at Witten, and Minnesota is tornado-and-survey work more than a hail canvass. Where the season's real ice keeps stacking up is still the Top States for Hail board. The full state-by-state list sits below — scan it for the town nearest you and see whether the 6th left anything worth a ladder.