Hail — Johnson, Iowa

1997-05-18 · near Iowa City, Johnson, Iowa

Event narrative

A 15 minute "rain" of baseball sized hail caused $30 to $50 million dollars of damage. One insurance agent said "this was the worst storm since 1967." He went on to say; "everyone he insures who has a skylight now has a broken skylight." This included the skylights over the swimming pool in the downtown Iowa City Holliday Inn. The average home claim was $3500 and the average car claim was $2500. The hail caused widespread damage to individuals cars and between 300 and 500 thousand dollars worth of damage to each of four car dealerships interviewed.

Wider weather episode

A very costly hailstorm passed across northeast Iowa into extreme northwestern Illinois, bringing several waves of hail greater than 1.5 inches. While there were a few reports of tornadoes; by far the most significant damage was done by large hail. In particular the hailstorm which hit Iowa City did around 40 million dollars of damage in just fifteen minutes.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (41.6700, -91.5500)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 5602720. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.