Hail — Mills, Iowa

2024-04-30 · near Glenwood, Mills, Iowa

Event narrative

The office received a public report of golf ball sized hail.

Wider weather episode

On the morning of April 30th, upper-air analyses showed a jet max ejecting out into the central/northern Plains, trailing behind a short-wave trough. Divergence aloft at the apex and just downstream from the trough brought synoptic scale forcing for ascent across much of the area by early afternoon. At the surface, south-southwesterly winds aided in boundary layer moistening with the transport of dew points into the 60s across much of southeast Nebraska into southwest Iowa. A dry-line was also noted to extend from east-central Nebraska southwest into central Kansas. This set the stage for scattered thunderstorm development by early afternoon.

By late morning, scattered showers and thunderstorms were already underway across portions of western Iowa, slowly moving to the northeast. By 1:30 pm, towering cumulus eventually gave way to thunderstorm development along and just ahead of the dry line, with the first storms initiating along a line from southeastern Stanton County, southeast into western Cass County. By 3:30 pm, thunderstorms had been ongoing or beginning to form along the entire stretch of the Missouri River through the OAX CWA. A couple thunderstorms in southwest Iowa and southeast Nebraska by mid-afternoon exhibited strong rotation which warranted tornado warnings. However, no tornadoes were reported. The vast majority of severe reports from these storms in the CWA were large hail, some of which were significant in size (greater than 2 inches in diameter).

View location on OpenStreetMap → (41.0279, -95.6991)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1166173. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.