Hail — Taylor, West Virginia

2016-04-28 · near Prunytown, Taylor, West Virginia

Event narrative

Hail as large as baseballs fell. The county emergency manager and insurance companies, tallied over 800 damaged vehicles in the county with dents, windows cracked, or rear windows smashed out. The emergency manager told the National Weather Service it looked like someone had taken a sledge hammer to the vehicles. This included dozens of vehicles at a Ford dealership and 8 sheriff vehicles. The county sheriff said, I've never seen a hail storm this bad. I've seen hail damage before, but I've never seen anything like this in all my life.' Almost every vehicle parked along Maple Avenue was damaged.

The principal of Grafton High School said, our auditorium was damaged, our gymnasiums were damaged, our greenhouse was damaged, we have a significant number of windows in the facility damaged, every skylight that we have was broken.

The emergency manager and insurance companies also figured around 260 buildings were affected, mostly with window, roof or siding damage. Also, 6 campers and 6 boats were damaged. The antique bulbs on their downtown street light poles were also broken.

You don't expect it to happen here, but when it does, you're just kind of in shock and awe, was how one local resident summed up the scene and its aftermath.

Wider weather episode

An east to west front had lifted north into southern Ohio and northern West Virginia during the day. By mid afternoon, the front was south of Columbus Ohio to near the Mason Dixon line around Morgantown. More clouds and cooler temperatures lingered north of the boundary. In southern Ohio and western West Virginia, more sunshine allowed for warmer temperatures and increased instability during the afternoon. Temperatures had warmed to the mid and upper 70s with dew points in the lower 60s.

Thunderstorms formed during the mid afternoon and moved east. One long lived cell came across the Ohio River and into Wood County producing large hail. Another cell on the southern edge of a larger cluster of showers and thunderstorms pulsed to stronger levels as it moved into Taylor County. In a narrow corridor in Taylor County, golf ball to tennis ball size hail was observed. The largest hail stones were the size of baseballs. Considerable damage was done around Grafton.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (39.3385, -80.0608)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 622125. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.