Hail in Lee County, Kentucky

An individual reported hail ranging in size from a pea up to a quarter along Highway 1036.

After a cool morning with some showers, clouds began to break and allow weak to moderate instability to build ahead of a weak prefrontal surface trough, located over central Kentucky and Middle Tennessee. Across eastern Kentucky, the most favorable instability and shear environment was observed southwest of KY-15. By mid-afternoon, storms were firing over the Lake Cumberland area and tracking from southwest-to-northeast onto fairly remote portions of the Cumberland Plateau. During the early and mid-evening, the focus for the strongest storms shifted eastward toward Pine and Black mountains before waning with the loss of daytime heating and the passage of a trailing cold front. Many of these storms featured rotating updrafts which produced swaths of small to marginally severe hail. The strongest storms produced up to half dollar size hail in Bell and Clay counties. In Bell County, some roadways were nearly covered by hail.