Hail — El Paso, Texas

2016-11-04 · near Socorro, El Paso, Texas

Event narrative

Supercell thunderstorms (very rare for November in this area) affected much of El Paso. The strongest, which actually weakened before moving into the United States, produced golf ball hail over far east El Paso into Horizon City. This caused record breaking insurance claims for a single hail event with a total of $200 million damage to vehicles and $100 million to homes. This doubled the previous record from 9-16-09. Flooding also occurred due to excessive hail amounts plugging up drains.

Wider weather episode

A broad area of high pressure was located through the central part of the country with easterly winds tapping low level moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. Upper level moisture was tapped from an upper low moving out of the Baja region. These two features combined to create sufficient shear for severe thunderstorms over El Paso county with up to golf ball sized hail and hundreds of millions of dollars in damage across eastern El Paso County. Severe hail was also reported in Hudspeth County.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (31.6851, -106.2103)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 666452. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.