Tornadoes tear across Florida while enormous hail pounds Texas

Tornadoes tear across Florida while enormous hail pounds Texas

LAKEWAY, Tex. — A wide-reaching and destructive barrage of severe weather has been slamming the United States since Monday, bringing deadly tornadoes, hurricane-force winds and massive hail. Hailstones the size of melons pummeled parts of Texas on Thursday night, coming close to breaking the state record and incurring millions of dollars’ worth of damage.

The last of the storms barreled through the Southeast on Friday morning, prompting tornado warnings with multiple quick-hitting spin-ups reported. Tallahassee was hit by a brief tornado shortly before sunrise as a violent squall line with embedded areas of rotation swept through. At one point, four tornadoes were on the ground simultaneously in the Florida Panhandle.

Once those storms move over the Atlantic, however, a quieter pattern will settle across the country after a memorable week. Twenty-two states have been affected by tornadoes since Monday, culminating in at least 98 total tornado reports, according to Weather Channel meteorologist Jonathan Erdman, who also noted more than 1,300 overall reports of severe weather.

Record-challenging Texas hail

A 4.2-inch hailstone rests on the dashboard. I recovered this after losing my windshield near Dripping Springs, Tex. (Matthew Cappucci/MyRadarWX)

Serious hailstorms pelted areas near Dallas, Waco and Austin on Thursday in a well-anticipated, albeit high-impact, severe weather episode. A trio of supercells, or rotating thunderstorms, formed in the afternoon. The northern two materialized west of Dallas and drifted southeast.

The third supercell formed well to the south, producing grapefruit-size hail, catching even some meteorologists off guard (like me, who lost my windshield to hail the size of softballs).

Among the biggest hail reports:

• 6.25 inches in Johnson City, Tex.
• 5 inches in Johnson City, Tex., documented by storm chasers Simon Brewer and Justin Drake
• 4.5 inches in Itasca, Tex.
• 4.5 inches in Pecan Plantation, Tex.
• 4.25 inches on my own windshield, west of Dripping Springs, Tex.

That 6.25-inch hail report, which was even documented via photos next to an iPhone 13, falls just a hair short of tying the record set by a 6.4-inch hailstone that fell on Hondo, west of San Antonio, on April 28, 2021.

Hail forms when raindrops are carried high into a storm by powerful updrafts, where temperatures are well below freezing. (Most hail forms between 10 and minus-22 degrees). On Thursday, very high levels of atmospheric instability, or support for upward-moving air, meant intense updrafts could support larger than typical hailstones.

Hailstorms are rarely deadly, but they are costly. It’s easy for a big hailstorm to cause $1 billion or more in damage if it passes over an urban area. In fact, hailstorms are the most costly thunderstorm-related hazard in Texas — more so than tornadoes or damaging winds.

Florida tornadoes

Intense storms Friday morning dropped a swarm of erratic-moving and quick-hitting tornadoes as they blasted through the Florida Panhandle. Radar confirmed debris lofted by the tornadoes, even if many of them were wrapped in rain and impossible to see.

At least one of the tornadoes hit Tallahassee, littering roadways with wood and insulation. That would correspond to at least low-end EF1 damage on the 0-to-5 Enhanced Fujita scale for intensity, though more significant damage may have occurred nearby.

Storms will continue toward the coastal Carolinas and northeast Florida while gradually weakening into the early afternoon Friday.

The end of a major outbreak

Each of the past 16 days has featured at least one confirmed tornado in the United States. April wound up tallying more than 300 tornado reports, the second most on record, falling behind only 2011.

An active jet stream pattern, characterized by numerous jet stream dips that kicked up a conga line of storm systems, yielded multiple multiday severe weather events since the last week of April. The first outbreak hit Nebraska and Iowa on April 26 with at least 78 preliminary reports of tornadoes. Then came the nocturnal tornado outbreak that claimed four lives in Oklahoma on the night of April 27 and destroyed a Dollar General distribution center. One of the tornadoes, which hit Marietta, Okla., was a violent EF4.

On May 2, a high-end EF3 tornado demolished homes near Hawley, Tex., with additional tornadoes in the following days. Then on Monday night, an EF4 tornado killed a person in Barnsdall, Okla.

That was the first of three days to feature a “tornado emergency” issued by the National Weather Service. On Tuesday, a tornado emergency was hoisted in Michigan for the first time, and on Wednesday, multiple tornado emergencies were declared, including in Middle Tennessee and east of Huntsville, Ala., where a “large and extremely dangerous” tornado struck after dark. Wednesday’s tornado tally was at least 28, and at least three people died among severe storms that day.

May is typically the busiest month for tornadoes, and this year will probably prove no exception. An uptick in severe weather chances, and subsequently the odds for more tornadoes, is likely later in the month after a relative lull this weekend into early next week.