Hail — Ector, Texas

2017-06-14 · near Odessa Ector Co Arpt, Ector, Texas

Event narrative

Numerous reports of baseball and softball sized hail were reported by the public in Odessa. This hail broke windows on cars and homes. The cost of damage is a very rough estimate.

Wider weather episode

During the early evening of June 14, 2017 severe thunderstorms developed along a dryline and moved across Odessa and into Midland, Texas. An upper low was over North Dakota while upper ridging was over northern Mexico. A shortwave passing over the northern part of the ridge put West Texas in westerly winds aloft and provided some upper level support for thunderstorms. Good moisture east of the dryline, strong heating at the surface with temperatures in the upper 90s to 100s, and high lapse rates lead to very strong instability. Those parameters in combination with wind shear attributed to organized thunderstorm development. These thunderstorms were not supercells, instead they were extremely strong multicellular thunderstorms with tops exceeding 60,000 feet. These severe storms produced very large hail and damaging winds as they moved across parts of the Permian Basin, impacting the highly populated cities of Midland and Odessa. Odessa received the largest hail and strongest winds.

The thunderstorms began to weaken as they moved into the City of Midland. The storm survey noted damage across a wide area of Odessa and West Odessa. There were reports of power poles snapped. There were numerous reports of baseball size or larger hail and the storm survey found evidence of hail possibly larger than softball size. Numerous homes and businesses had roof damage, windows broken and exterior siding damaged. Numerous trees were uprooted by the strong winds and thousands of cars were damaged by the large hail. This was likely caused by a microburst with estimated wind speeds of 100 mph. The damage estimate for the storms this day and on June 12th totaled to $480 million.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (31.8942, -102.3090)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 723644. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.