Hail — Kanabec, Minnesota

2020-08-10 · near Ogilvie, Kanabec, Minnesota

Event narrative

There was a measured hailstone of 1 inch in diameter south of Ogilvie. Local radar showed a wider area of higher returns west and east of Ogilvie where larger hail likely fell. There was measured hailstone of 1.5 inches in southern Pine County as the storm moved east of Kanabec County.

Wider weather episode

During the evening of Sunday, August 9th, a storm developed in Carver County, west of the NWS office. Several more storms developed and trained over the same areas that affected eastern Carver, far northern Scott, and southern Hennepin Counties for an hour. The storms were difficult to recognize the severity at first as they developed nearly overhead from the radar location in Chanhassen.

Once the storms weakened over southern Hennepin County, more storms reformed northwest of the Twin Cities, and again produced very large hail around Buffalo, Montrose, Hanover, Rockford, and Loretto. These storms propagated east-southeast toward the western suburbs of the Twin Cities and produced damaging hail between Lake Minnetonka, Eden Prairie and Edina. Slowly, the storms began to propagate to the southeast across south-central Minnesota, by the early morning.

There was a period where hailstones were as large as baseballs (based on pictures from social media) across the western metro area. The two areas that had pictures of the largest stones were Loretto and Victoria.

Based on social media pictures, radar, and MRMS information, there were four areas that likely had hail up to baseball size hail, or possibly greater. The first area was the southern part of Kanabec County. The second area was from southeast Wright County, eastward across Hennepin between Lake Minnetonka to Edina. The third area was near Jordan, southeast to Lydia in Scott County. The fourth area was along the Dakota, Rice County line near Northfield.

Another unique part of these storms is that the hail was nearly continuous for 5 to 15 minutes, and some of the larger hailstones caused significant damage to cars and roofs.

In addition to all of the hail reports, several lines of thunderstorms that continued over the same areas, produced a wide area of very heavy rainfall reports with the heaviest at the NWS office at 5.53 inches. Reports between two and four inches that weren't included in the event were concentrated between Victoria, Chanhassen, Shakopee, Eden Prairie, Bloomington and Lake Minnetonka.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (45.8000, -93.4200)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 900280. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.