Hail in Swisher County, Texas

A slow-moving high precipitation supercell produced copious amounts of damaging hail across northern Swisher County with some hailstones as large as baseball size in Happy. A 12-mile stretch of Interstate 27 from Happy to north of Tulia was covered in hail up to six inches deep. In addition to damaging roofs of homes and businesses, intense straight line winds in the rear flank downdraft of the supercell carried hail sideways which shattered many north and west facing windows. Countless vehicles along Interstate 27 suffered broken windows and significant hail dents. It is estimated that 500 acres of winter wheat were flattened by this barrage of hail, wind and torrential rains with 40 percent of the winter wheat crop suffering lesser degrees of damage. Preliminary combined monetary losses are estimated at $4M.

Early this morning, a series of outflow boundaries moved south across the southern Texas Panhandle and much of the Rolling Plains. The most organized of these boundaries would eventually retreat north before stalling from near Hereford (Deaf Smith County, WFO AMA) southeast to Paducah (Cottle County). This boundary provided the focus for an intense and long-lived supercell that developed west of Hereford by mid-afternoon. This supercell proceeded to move southeast and impact areas from Happy and Tulia (Swisher County) southeast to Silverton (Briscoe County), Matador (Motley County) and Grow (King County) with destructive hail, downburst winds and torrential rainfall rates of one half inch in five minutes. By early evening, a second supercell developed west of Plainview (Hale County) and crawled eastward accompanied by hail up to golf ball size and a brief tornado over open land near Lockney (Floyd County).