Oak Brook, Illinois got hit again. The 27th dropped 2-inch and 1.75-inch stones on that DuPage County suburb, and on the 28th another 2-incher came down on the same town. Two afternoons, three reports, one small patch of ground — and a lot of roofs out there that were already compromised before yesterday started.
The wider story moved east. A hail corridor lit up from the Blue Ridge to the Chesapeake: a 2-inch stone at Shenandoah Junction in West Virginia, another 2-incher at Taylors Island out on Maryland's Eastern Shore, and 1.75-inchers at Shenandoah Retreat in Virginia and Stony Point in North Carolina, with more ice down through Hiddenite and Murphy.
Maryland is the one to circle. Past the Eastern Shore stone, 1.75-inch hail came down on Dundalk and Rosedale — that isn't open country, that's packed Baltimore suburb, block after block of rowhomes and postwar ranches with a lot of tired shingles on them. Maryland also took one of the day's two tornadoes, at Trappe; the other spun up clear across the country at Kanosh, Utah.
Now, about getting hit twice. Hail damage stacks in a way most people don't expect. The first storm shakes the granule layer loose and bruises the mat, and the shingle still sheds water fine, so nothing looks wrong from the yard. The second storm lands on a surface that has already lost its armor, and stones that would have been survivable on their own go straight through to the mat. If you're in Oak Brook — or anywhere the western Chicago suburbs got worked over on the 27th — don't judge yesterday's storm on its own merits. That roof has now taken two.
Nebraska's panhandle ran its own show: 1.75-inch hail at Lisco, 1.5 at Bridgeport, and an 80 mph gust at Broadwater that was the hardest wind anywhere that day. Colorado posted the biggest raw count of any state at 25 reports, but 23 of those were gusts and the ice never cleared an inch — a loud afternoon on the Front Range, not a damaging one.
For crews, the 28th is more concentrated than a 95-report map usually is: Dundalk and Rosedale on the Baltimore side, and the Oak Brook stretch west of Chicago where the damage is now two storms deep. Where the year's hail leaders stand is on the Top States for Hail board. Run the state table below, find your county, and see what the 28th actually put down near you.