Hail Of A St Patrick's Day In Texas And Elsewhere

A bowl full of big hail in Texas this
morning, via Twitter from @stormchaser4850.
also known as Johnny Kelly.  

Lots of people in the Dallas -Fort Worth area got a rude awakening early this morning when a thunderstorm packing big hail, and lots of it blasted through.

The hail was bigger than golf balls in many locations, and reached tennis ball sized hail in a few places.

As you can imagine, there was lots of damage.  (Videos at the bottom of this post.)

The saddest news by far out of this storm comes from the Fort Worth Zoo, where the hail killed five flamingoes, a pelican, and ibis and a swan, the Dallas Morning News reported.

Medstar, a local ambulance service said all 30 of its ambulances had hail damage. The hail busted out three rear windows of cruisers parked at an Arlington Police Department lot.

The hail hit at the beginning of the morning commute, so there were surely many cars damaged out on the freeways, not to mention many terrified motorists, too.

The thunderstorms continued on into the Deep South today, spewing more hail, some the size of baseballs in Mississippi, and damaging winds.  There were even a couple of tornado reports.

Hail was reported in several areas in New England, too. Most of it was small, but some was about the size of quarters in Maine.

Here's a video of the loud hail pounding Arlington, Texas:



The hail really piled up McKinney, Texas:



Maine got into the hail act Friday, too. Here's the scene in Bowdoinham, Maine: