Hail — Gaines, Texas

1997-05-08 · near Seagraves, Gaines, Texas

Event narrative

Baseball size hail and larger smashed the windshield of a Police cruiser and shattered windows in several homes. Power was knocked out around town as well. Autos and roofs of houses were smashed by the large hail and accounted for much of the damage total. A local insurance agent said the damage was the worst in 20 years in Seagraves.Storms that were moving eastward into the Seagraves area had been a multicell cluster, but just before arriving at Seagraves one cell developed briefly into an HP Supercell.

Wider weather episode

A very active evening with a cold front sagging into the region and southeast surface winds flowing into the mountains to help initiate deep convection. Dew point temperatures were near 60 degrees with surface temperatures in the upper 80s to lower 90s. The observed MAF sounding from this evening using the best (mean) parcel showed a lifted index of -10 (-8) and a CAPE of 3420 (2710) J/kg with no cap.In Gaines County hail destroyed over 6000 acres of cotton.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (32.9300, -102.5500)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 5612842. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.