Four and a half inches. That's a softball, and it came down on Wisconsin at Gresham, up in Shawano County, on the afternoon of the 27th. Nothing that big has been reported anywhere in the country since May 21. Wisconsin backed it up with a 2.75-incher in the same town and a whole rank of 3-inch hits — Shawano, Algoma, Sturgeon Bay, and Port Wing clear over on Lake Superior.
The day's damage bill, though, belongs to Illinois, which logged 73 reports and aimed most of them straight at Chicago's western suburbs. Shorewood took a 3-inch stone, Westmont a 2.5, and then a long roll call of 1.75-to-2-inch ice through Clarendon Hills, Hinsdale, Oak Brook, Downers Grove, Lemont, Carol Stream, Tinley Park, Plainfield, and Channahon. That is not open farm country. That is roof after roof after roof.
The same storms put down five Illinois tornadoes — two at Glen Ellyn, plus Markham, East Hazel Crest, and Hoopeston down by the Indiana line — and roughed up the South Side with 74 mph gusts at Midway. Michigan caught a separate piece of it, 1.5-inch stones at Au Sable and Oscoda on the Lake Huron shore, while Indiana got mostly the wind tail with an inch-and-a-quarter stone at Broad Ripple.
Here's the trouble with two-inch hail in a subdivision: those roofs are almost all architectural comp, and architectural comp is very good at hiding a hit. Two inches doesn't punch through — it bruises the mat underneath and shears granules off in soft round patches you'll never pick out from the sidewalk. The gutters, the window screens, the siding, and the hood of whatever was parked in the driveway will tell you the truth faster than the roof will. Dimpled screens mean the shingles caught it too.
At Gresham's size there's nothing subtle about it — 4.5-inch hail cracks mats outright, goes through skylights, and dents every piece of metal it can find. If you're in Shawano County, that's a call-somebody-today situation, not a wait-and-see one.
For crews, the 27th is the best board of the month by a wide margin, and it splits clean: dense, high-value, wall-to-wall suburban work through DuPage, Will, and Cook counties, or fatter stones and thinner competition up in northeast Wisconsin. Where the season's hail stacks up by state is on the Top States for Hail board. The state-by-state numbers run below — find your county and see how close the 27th came to your address.