One Hail Of A Storm!

It appears our severe weather season started early this year!  We're up to 8 tornadoes so far this year and all 8 of those were in January and February, outside of our primary severe weather season.  This does not bode well for spring.  I have never seen an early start to severe weather season suddenly shut down.  This will likely go well into April and May with severe weather chances.  I hope I'm wrong, but it's looking quite active.  The warmer than average sea surface temperatures in the Gulf also looks ominous.  That provides the deep moisture needed to fuel storms.

The severe weather Saturday was well forecast a week in advance, but as usual the models had a difficult time in the long range with specifics.  Guidance was even disagreeing the day before the event which is startling and upsetting.  It's 2018 and the perception is weather modeling is not where it should be.  I hope that changes, but I see no signs of that.

I will say my favorite short range model, HRRR (High Resolution Rapid Refresh) did a fantastic job.  It almost perfectly nailed the placement of the supercell thunderstorm and cluster of storms Saturday.  I'll show an example of that below.

When all is said and done, this hail storm likely produced several million dollars in damages.  In 2009, we had a smaller hail storm hit Sherwood into Lonoke county.  There was a total of almost $70 million in damages to car dealerships, homes, cars, and crops in Pulaski and Lonoke counties. To the best of my knowledge, no car dealerships were affected Saturday and crops are not planted yet.  However, the long path of these storms from northwest Arkansas down to the southeast corner produced and very long path of damage and we all know White Hall and Pine Bluff took a direct hit.  There will be a ton of property damage.

This hail actually could have been worse.  Did you notice there were few wind damage reports?  In most cases, the hail was not wind blown.  This would have created more damage on top of what already occurred. 

If you have damage, it's obvious to see on your car, but it's NOT obvious sometimes to your roof.  Have a professional inspect it.   Make sure the roofing company you hire is a respectable one.  Unfortunately, we see scams after storms.  Don't be a victim!  Of course I'm going to encourage you to GO LOCAL when hiring a roofer. 

We have put together a great section on our website to help you out.  CLICK HERE

While I hope we never have something like this again, we live in Arkansas.  I can't thank all of you enough for helping me cover the event Saturday evening with reports and pictures.  You helped convey the threat so we could clearly communicate it to those in the path.  

Remember, when reporting hail to Channel 7 or the National Weather Service, please include location and time. NEVER PUT YOURSELF IN ANY DANGER!

Also, sometimes it's difficult to determine hail size in a picture if it's not photographed with something to compare it to like a tennis ball, baseball, or golf ball.  A ruler helps a lot too.   Once again, never put yourself in any danger whatsoever.  

THE PREFERRED METHOD OF REPORTING HAIL SIZE

CARRIE IN PINE BLUFF TOOK THIS PICTURE

ROB WYATT TOOK THIS PICTURE AND SENT IT TO ME VIA TWITTER IN JEFFERSON COUNTY

THE HRRR DID SUCH A TREMENDOUS JOB THE DAY OF THE EVENT.  LOOK AT THE COOLER COLORS (BLUE) STRETCHING FROM SALINE COUNTY INTO GRANT AND JEFFERSON COUNTY, THEN SOUTHEAST. THIS IS THE MODEL SEEING THE HAIL COOLING THE AIR.  WHILE NOT PERFECT, IT WAS PRETTY DARN CLOSE.  THE SIMULATED RADAR SHOWED A SUPERCELL GOING OVER THIS AREA WITH A TREMENDOUS HAIL CORE.