THAT IS HAIL?! | BRITISH GUY Reacts to British Thunderstorms Ain't Got Nothing on America! 

American weather is really something. In 2003 I was making dinner and watching my 2 year old son play happily in the living room. My husband was working out of town. I heard a sound like a freight train coming, started to run toward the living room and then there was a huge boom and all of the lights went out in my house. They've called it straight line winds or a derecho. Most ominously there wasn't a sound from my little one. I started to realize that there was something strange in my way. A 60 foot pine had been torn out of the ground like a corkscrew, flipped upside down and driven through my roof straight down through my living room. I kind of noticed, curiously that someone was screaming. Didn't realize that it was me. And that the living room was gone. When I finally caught my breath i heard "mama, mama?" It was my son from the hallway. He said that this nice man had picked him up, carried him into the hallway and told him to stay still until the sound stopped. So, he did. I still thank that angel who stepped in and saved him. The house didn't matter.

Iowa boy here. I have seen 3 tornadoes in my life. 1 had hailstones the size of baseballs. They broke everything they hit. Never did find the lid to my Weber grill, but the trampoline was easy to find. It was wrapped around my tree 30 ft up.

Lawrence married an American and moved here. He's since gotten his citizenship. I've been watching him for years! Heat adds energy to the storms, and in the Great Lake states it often adds moisture as well. All of this adds up to intensify already bad storms. Here's a storm from last year in Chicago. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-pTW3gO_hkIs.html Around here we usually don't get bigger than golf balls, but there have been a few instances where it did. In 1994, a hail storm took out all the windows on the north side of BSA Hospital, as well as destroying tons of windshields in the parking lot. The thing to remember is, if you have hail and rain you're probably okay as long as you're indoors. If the hail continues and the rain stops, you're more likely to have a twister. It's about the structure of the storm. The more power the storm has, the longer it can keep the hailstones suspended and collecting more ice, so the bigger they get, and the more powerful the storm, the more likely it is to twist up.

Extremes in weather are a way of life in the US. IN 2022, We had a heat wave with a heat index (air temp plus high humidity) of 121°F (49°C). A storm rolled through in the evening and the temperature dropped 60 degrees overnight to 61°F (16°C).

The low cloud stuff is normal for storms and low cloud bases. It's only an issue if the thunderstorm is a supercell and it's rotating. Otherwise they've been dubbed "SLCs" for "scary looking clouds" but they won't actually do anything. ETA: My hail story was I had just gotten back to college from spring break and a bunch of thunderstorms had popped up as they do in Kansas in April and I had my new (to me) car in the student parking lot across the street, which is completely uncovered, and I was having an anxiety attack watching the BASEBALL SIZED HAIL move closer...and closer, and luckily, went around to the northeast of us but good LORD I was sweating bullets.

Finally! A Lost in the Pond reaction! This guy has some of the best Britain vs USA videos.

So glad you found and like Lawrence! If you're still interested in looking at an average US house, Lawrence just bought that house ( his first in the US). He has several videos about the house, garden and garage. The place is older ( looks like 1940s), but is much closer to the average American house. Enjoy!

Last year (maybe the year before) the hail was so bad at an outdoor concert venue here in Colorado that it broke people’s bones. In the summer my backyard can look like it’s winter, but nope- all hail. 😊

Have you heard of a microburst storm? It is like a super powerful weather event that simulates a strong rainstorm and pushes air down creating 80MPH down force winds in a small area maybe not more than a mile wide. These events happen rarely but are interesting because they occur in clear sky conditions in warm humid areas.

I live in Ontario Canada and we have storms and hail like that here. I did live in Iowa for 10 years, you do get use to the tornados and the sirens. They are tested once a month. After a big hail storm, you wait about 2 weeks then goto the car dealership to buy the hail damaged cars at a HUGE discount lol. Also with tornados, a lot of times the sky (during the day) does have a tinge of green to it

Pittsburgh, PA Thunderstorms, Hailstorms and Blizzards, some places in PA felt Earthquakes and had Tornados. We can also have all 4 seasons in 1 day.

I've seen Snowplows have to clear roads that were covered in Hail

A few years back, there was a hail storm in my town, where the hail was not particularly large, perhaps the size of a large pea. But it was the quantity of hail that fell that was astonishing. By the time that hail storm was over, there was more than 3 inches of hail covering the ground. Hail fell as fast as hard as the rain in an intense thunderstorm. It was amazing! And, just about everybody in my town got a new roof because everybody’s roof beaten to pieces. Thank God for homeowners insurance :-). Also, in the South, we have an expression “it came up a cloud“. That expression very accurately describes how quickly a huge and intense thunderstorm can arrive. I have actually been horseback riding on a nice sunny afternoon, and I looked toward the west, and it’s coming up a cloud . So I turn my horse around and I am literally galloping, trying to make it home while being chased down by the bigger and blacker cloud until the rain just falls out of the heavens and I feel like a fish in a barrel with lightning striking everywhere.

I’ve lived all over the US…bad weather is everywhere…ice storms that take out power for days or even weeks (no heat) and bring down massive trees, hail as big as baseballs bashing your car, your windows, (your head), whiteout blizzards w wind chill at 70° below , 3+ feet of snow dumped, collapsed roofs and completely covered cars w drifts up to the second story windows, and life grinding to a complete standstill for days, 8” of rain in an hour, flash floods, cars swept off roadways, cities turning into lakes deep enough to jet ski down Main, tornadoes that wipe entire towns off the face of the planet, hurricanes that send in 200mph winds and 30’ foot storm surges, 105°+ degree heat waves that kill people every summer, dry hot weather w crazy winds and lightening that start forest fires that burn 1000’s upon 1000’s of acres and towns to the ground…I’ve personally seen all of these things, sometimes many times. (They never got me)

April 26th we had two tornados in Omaha and 6 days ago we had anywhere from 3 to 7 inches of rain in Nebraska and Iowa with cars floating down the street in Omaha. Now, Thursday the tornado sirens went off at 2:30 a.m. with 70 mile an hour winds starting a derecho that traveled almost 600 miles into Illinois. It's been a fun start to summer.

I’m from Colorado, east of the Rocky Mountains. The cool air over the mountains mixes with the warm air over the Midwest and boom. I’ve seen hail here every year. Sometimes it’s very destructive.

We were visiting my grandparents in Algona, Iowa in 1979 and an F3 came through the town. We were sitting in the living room watching tv and my mom turned down the volume and said, “is that a tornado siren?”. It could barely be heard. Grandpa, Dad and myself all got up to look out the big picture window. We were just staring out across the huge front yard and the corn fields across the two lane highway, when Grandpa says, “look at all those blackbirds flying in a circle”. My dad quickly corrected him that it wasn’t blackbirds. It was a tornado that was on the highway about 50 yards from the house. Grandpa mistook debris for birds. Luckily it was moving away from us, so no damage. It was the most surreal moment.

Live in Lake Park, Iowa-I’ve been around thunderstorms, tornadoes, blizzards (in the winter) all my life. You get used to them. The older generations always say ‘you can smell a storm coming’ and now that I’m over 50, it’s true. Thunderstorms/rainstorms have a unique smell.

Hail is rare in my part of the midwest. The tornado sirens are tested on the first Wednesday of each month, they can be heard from about a half mile away (0.8 km). I was the lucky one to live right across the street from the fire station. If you think they are loud at a distance, imagine being 100 feet away from one, blaring in your direction.

The sirens are NEVER tested on overcast days. Summer 2019 we had a family emergency and had to drive Denver to Des Moines overnight. The lightning was so intense that I firmly believe it would have set off a seizure in anyone with epilepsy. Apparently the storm cell was traveling at 60 miles per hour, so if you were stationary, it was no big deal. Our travel, however, meant that we were under it for hour after hour. We only had to pull off once in Nebraska when we caught up with the wall of water. Hail. June 14, 1980. The sky turned green (very bad sign), but then the north sky turned dark PURPLE. The hail was the size of softballs. Imagine sitting in a house with high windows on the north side. First the rain pattered, then it drummed. Then the small hail started snapping against the glass. Now hit an empty tin can as hard as you can with a drumstick. That's what it sounded like before we moved ourselves and our elderly neighbor around a wall. The windows broke when the hail got to racquetball/baseball size. The softball-sized hail was absolutely deafening as it pounded the walls of the house. Bits of hail and debris bounced into the room where we sat consoling our neighbor. You couldn't yell to the person right next to you and be heard. There's a reason I made our children wear their shoes (sometimes even to bed) when the weather was potentially violent.

Summers in the South Atlantic coast is thunderstorms every day. The heat pushes out into the ocean and the sea breeze pushes rain back in. Sometimes the entire building shakes because the thunder is so loud.

Always loved the back flow of wind when a big storm approaches. One second the wind is at your back the next it's in your face.

Storms like these can happen out of nowhere one time when I at work a strom blew in out of nowhere knocked over power lines and several trees on my college campus to that was a fun day.

Laurence lives here. He became a US citizen last year and he and his American wife bought their first home as well. You should totally check out more of his videos. His videos really dive into the differences he's noticed being a Brit who moved here 15 years ago. I love watching thunderstorms. My 83 yr old mother, not so much. Thunderstorms don't necessarily cool down the weather. After they're done especially in the South, the weather is just hotter because the humidity gets crazier. Hail isn't a common thing. For the most part at least where I am in VA, we might see hail maybe once every 3 or so years and it's usually the size of that button on your remote, lol.

I grew up in the NE coast of Florida. The warmer the weather, the worse the thunderstorm. In summer you get one almost daily, and they can get violent very quickly. You are educated about storm safety when you are young. 1. If you hear thunder, get out of the water you are swimming in, immediately - water tends to draw lightning. 2. Don’t shelter under a tree during a thunderstorm, FL is so flat, and lightning strikes tall objects. If you are caught in an open flat place during a sudden storm, you are now the tallest target -they actually teach you to lie down or get as low as possible if the lightning is severe. 3. Very sadly, when I was in middle school, after school sports rules were permanently changed because a boy holding a metal baseball bat was struck by lightening and killed (the bat being the “lightning rod.”) fFom that day forward if sports are in play, and it starts to thunder, all stops and everyone heads inside. 4. Lightning once struck and “bounced” across my front lawn, (inches from the house) when I was young. It killed 2 trees, tore a deep thin ditch across the yard where it hit, knocked pictures off the wall, fried our computer, smoke detectors, landline phones, and severed the cable TV wire in the yard in about 3 places. It was terrifying. 5. Hail is from hell - it pock marks cars regularly and can break windows if especially large. 6. Tornado sirens where I used to live sound like air raid sirens - they get your attention, as designed, because they are super unsettling. 7. When a tornado is close the pressure drops so suddenly it will make your ears pop and the pressure drop can shatter windows. If a hurricane is headed your way (HUGE threat in Florida, and bonus, they spawn tornados,) you will see people put a large tape “X” on them - this is so that if the windows are broken from pressure or debris they won’t shatters so badly, sending glass everywhere. Every area in the US has some type of “natural disaster” that people have to deal with regularly. Hurricanes, tornados, blizzards, earthquakes, flooding, forest fires, etc. For the most part, we just learn all we can, try to stay safe, and get on with life. 😎

Been watching him for a few years. He’s awesome

Garages protect you from having to clean your car of 10 inches of snow pileup after a storm, hail, -60 degree winter chill that kills a car battery or extreme high temperatures like 120 degrees in the desert. Just lots of weather round here. I live in southeastern Michigan and have experienced all but the 120 degree hot weather. Hottest I’ve ever experienced here was around 105 degrees. In fact it is rockin and rollin in the Midwest today with tornadoes expected again

Had a tornado on Tuesday and we are suppose to have more storms on Sunday here in eastern Iowa. This is why I love living here, you wait 15 minutes and the weather may change.

I've been in at least 2 hail storms with softball size hail. Hail that large goes right through the roof. One storm chipped the brick on my house.

Mr Couser. I live somewhere in the Appalachian mountains of northern Pa. Mate, we all own Chainsaws here and none of my neighbors are loggers. Because Mother Nature at least three times a year throws a mental fit and drops limbs all over. Most of us have generators or wish we did. Mark Twain, the famous 1800s humorist, famously said if you hate the weather in the Twin Tiers area just wait 15 minutes and it will change. It’s nothing to go to work in the morning wearing a jacket, slosh through wet snow, and after work, drive home in 70F weather and have to run the AC in the car for a bit. That’s a normal spring here.

Hurricanes are lovely. Massive wind, the ocean visits your house, rain, and depending on which side of the storm you are on, it will spit out tornadoes like an ex spits hate.

3 nights ago here in Shreveport, Louisiana we had a hail storm come through and lasted a half hour. The sizes ranged from: pea, marble, golf ball, baseball and finally softball. My vehicle was only slightly dented on the hood and roof. My friends car looked like someone went to town on it with two ball pen hammers!

I'll never forget the time in July in Redding, California when it was 110° F outside (that's about 43° Celsius ) and it hailed so hard it looked like a winter wonderland. It took over 10 minutes to melt

I'm in Houston Texas. We're at the end of Tornado Alley. What I hate about tornadoes is when it's dark and the rain is pouring down, you can't see if there's a tornado. You can hear them, but not being able to see them freaks me out.

My Aunt used to live three miles from our house. We had a nasty thunderstorm. Hail at our house was popcorn sized. Hail at my aunt's house was the sized of softballs. My mother didn't believe her with her living so close. Aunt Hazel said.. "I'll bring it down to show you". The next day my aunt came to visit and she had put the hailstone in an old styrofoam hamburger container from McDonald's. There was a softball sized hailstone that still had the dirt, grass, and leaves on it. My mother apologized to her for not believing her. That same storm snapped several of the huge trees between my aunt and cousin's houses. My aunt was lucky that that hail and storm didn't destroy her trailer.

I live in Indiana and have lived through a tornado, a flood, a blizzard and an earthquake. I’ve held hail as big as tennis balls, and yes, they wreck your car, your roof, anything it crashes into. I’ve climbed drifts of snow as tall as the roof on a single story house and slid off the roof like a snow slide. I’ve used my own boat to get my family, pets and a few neighbors to safety during a flood. The weather can be extreme, but beautiful as well.

I live in Oklahoma City and several years ago we had a hail storm that dropped some truly huge stones. I have a photo of a friend holding one in both hands, and it fills his hands. Automobile Hail damage repair and glass replacement is big business here.

Just recently in Texas there was hail the size of a cricket ball

I grew up in West Michigan loving the power and light shows of thunderstorms, especially the lighting, as they came across Lake Michigan, and yes we’d get occasional hail. Now, after spending half my life in the San Francisco Bay Area, we seldom or hardly ever get them, as it only rains in the winter months, if and when it rains. One afternoon in the autumn, referred to as the Indian Summer in SF, there was a strike of lighting followed by a loud earth shaking rolling thunder, people started running outside to see what happened. People were freaked out thinking it was a bomb or some crash landing. It was hilarious, my friend asked why I was so calm and I was like, it’s just thunder man, no worries here. It’s definitely something one needs to get used to, but they’re great displays of nature, and leave the air smelling fresh after. Love your reactions man

Okay, you hear that everything's bigger in Texas, right? Well, we have hail down here quite often. I grew up in the Texas panhandle town of Amarillo. My first real memory of big hail was when I was about 9 (1965). We were pulling up to the house when the storm started. My dad rushed into the house, got a big pan and came out to carry us into the house. He put the pan over our heads and we had hail the size of golf balls coming down. That stuff hurts, but dad at least kept us from getting knocked out by it. Later, in 88, I bought a brand new Escort GT. I had had it all of 3 weeks when we had a tornado go over the mall. I worked in a building across the parking lot and the hail that went along with that storm was between golf ball and baseball sized. I came out to my poor car pounded into a big dent, looked like a golf ball car. The insurance paid for a new hood, roof, and the two front quarter panels to be replaced. Oh, and my windshield was cracked and needed replaced as well. Since then, I've moved to the Houston area but I heard that back in the early 2000s, Amarillo got hit by Grapefruit-sized hail that ruined 3 new car dealerships inventory on the west tide of town. For reference, here's some info for you: www.wunderground.com/article/storms/severe/news/2020-05-23-enormous-hail-northern-texas www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/from-quarters-to-grapefruit-we-test-how-hailstones-can-damage-your-home/ Oklahoma a few years ago but you can see the damage: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE--BzClfhkjmU.htmlsi=aomo7GA7HhX_CNrq

I live in northern Washington and we get storms/hail constantly. I was running my delivery route in a coastal area and I could see the storm coming towards us from sea. It was just a wall of black from sea to sky. It moved in and hail slammed the fuck out of me for about 10 minutes until it passed. I'm used to it, but it still sucks.

Hail is a rare thing, but it happens. The last time I seen hail was last year

I live in central Indiana and we have it all!! Lots of snow, an occasional blizzard, tornadoes and thunderstorms, some with hail in the spring and summer. But fall? Fall is nice!!! My favorite season.

Have been in one tornado, watched one small one go across a field right in front of me. We also have something called “wind sheer” which can act like a tornado with winds clocked in at 200 mph. Was in an old homestead once when it hit, uprooted 150 year old trees all around me. BUT in my 2nd floor apartment, with windows open, one curtain was down, nothing else was disturbed.

I grew up in Eastern Nebraska. Tornado watches were almost a weekly occurrence during the summer. I was at a friends house when we got golf ball size hail . Completely totaled my car. I've been in 2 major tornadoes.Last one was in 1988. The city where I was living had 4 confirmed tornadoes on the ground.

Floroida here. I've been through several hurricanes, two which were direct his. Wind gusts gradually increase in speed and longevity, going from a low-pitched howl to a high-pitched hiss. After that, it sounds like a steam-powered locomotive.

Indiana Hoosier here. Yes, tornadoes and intense T:-storm's with large hail. We've had to have our roof replaced and cars fixed. Our house got struck by lightening and it blew a chunk of concrete the size of a grapefruit out of the concrete patio when it exited, no other damage other than ruined appliances. Scary stuff.

The "nipple" of a cloud is a scud cloud. It is super easy for folks not used to them to mistake them for tornado funnels forming.

Lawrence mentioned "derecho" storms occurring near his area. Not sure if you know what that is, but it is a storm system with strong winds, not in a whirlwind like a tornado, but blowing in a straight line. For "derecho" status, the event has to last for a while, cause damage over a large area (around 250 miles) with winds faster than 58 miles (93km) per hour. The winds can cause tornados as a side effect in some circumstances. We just had a derecho earlier this month here in Houston, Texas, with 100mph winds, 7 deaths, and a million households without power, some for several days.

A tornado went through my town in Southern Illinois two weeks ago, about a mile from my house. I could hear the wind and feel the pressure. I called my friend in the UK screaming. Storms are on their way again. Tornados are destroying Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri as I write this. It is 1:30 AM and I am afraid to go to sleep seeing these storms approach.

It was 103F in South Texas today or 39C. I have back pain, so I'm sensitive to weather changes. We had no showers in the forecast, but I was hurting. Now there's a 50% chance of Thunderstorms tonight! Whelp, at least we're getting rain. Lol

I've experienced lots of hail, some small, some large, and some gigantic. Yes, we have garages to keep our vehicles from hail damage... and from theft. Hail insurance is a thing in America. When you get insurance for your vehicle, make sure it covers hail damage.

In Minneapolis there are a lot of sudden storms, and sometimes in the warmer months really impressive thunderstorms with almost constant lightning for hours, but so far in my two years here only one serious hailstorm, which was frightening as I was driving, and it gets really loud in your car when you're bombarded by ice. I was afraid for the car and looked for a tree to park under, but nothing bad happened. The hailstones were about a centimeter in diameter.

The Joplin Missouri tornado had wind speeds so high that it embeded things like dirt and wood chips into people's skin. The US just this last week had storms which produced hail the size of baseballs.

April 3 and 4th, 1974. One of the worst outbreaks in history. 148 tornadoes crossed 13 states. There’s not an exact total of deaths, but it was well into the hundreds. I was a child back then, but I can remember it as though it were yesterday.

Iowa here. The derecho was really bad here we lost over 30000 trees in my city. A lot of old huge trees were lost. It's really sad to see parks with very few trees in them.

Rural west-central Missouri here (middle of the country). We get thunderstorms and tornadoes and the occasional derecho. I think the most memorable thunderstorm I've been in was when I was in high school. We had a bunch of family in the house that night, just hanging out, y'know? I was sitting on a tall stool in the kitchen while my oldest sister cut my hair. There were 2 pregnant women in the kitchen, bunch of people watching TV in the living room etc. Lightning struck the transformer on the pole in the back yard. Fire shot out of the electric burners on the stove and melted the coffee pot and the TV exploded. Dad found a flashlight and got the breakers flipped back on. The scissors my sister cut my hair with were gone, the TV was toast, and my mom spent the rest of the night frantically counting people because she thought someone got incinerated when the burner flared. But neither of the girls went into labor so at least there were no lightning babies. 😂 Thinking back now, I don't know how the transformer on the pole survived, but apparently it did.

Great channel. Keep it up! I live in Fort Worth, Texas, the southern end of America's "Tornado Alley"... When I was in high a group of us were at a Texas Ranger's baseball game in Arlington, TX. When a rather big and nasty hailstorm started we ran for our cars. The hail was about the size of golf balls and one of my buddies had his collarbone broken when it was hit by falling hail. During that hailstorm car dealerships lost thousands of cars that were parked in outdoor lots... Years later, after I spent 20 years on the CA coast I moved back. Met a guy who'd worked for a roofing company here and he claimed to have seen "golf ball", "baseball" and even "softball" sized hail over the years... He'd even had an elderly client once who was sitting on her sofa watching TV during a storm in north Texas. A baseball sized hailstone crashed through her roofing, then her living room ceiling and finally slammed onto the floor between her two knees, narrowly missing hitting her head. A few inches left or right and she'd probably be dead... Fun fun.

I live in Connecticut. On my way to work one morning, the hail was coming down so fast and so much I had to pull the car over. I couldn't see at all. It probably only lasted a couple of minutes but the landscape was covered in white in July. Another time, driving from one corner of the state to my house, the aftermath of the storms looked worse and worse as I got closer to home. I crossed the Connecticut River into my town and cars were smashed, wires down, trees down and debris all over the place. My house was fine, thanks to the many trees taking most of the hits, and my children saved some golf ball size hail in the freezer. My son said he ran out to get some and then he said to me, "and boy did they hurt!" Connecticut occasionally gets tornadoes but mostly west of the Connecticut River. I did experience the F4 tornado that hit Windsor Locks. I was driving a few miles south of it, when it hit and immediately took to shelter.

I have lived in tornado alley as well as hurricane central in South Georgia so I’ve experienced just about every weather situation you can think of! I was living in Savannah, Georgia in the 90s when we got the “storm of the century” I was working in a mall which had glass ceilings in the main hallway when part of the storm hit. We were inside the little gift store I worked in when we started hearing what sounded like the entire mall falling down at the opposite end and then the next thing we know people were screaming and running out in the main hallways outside the stores because the ceiling started breaking and huge sheets of glass were falling into the building. It was terrifying! I had walked out towards the door to the parking lot when I watched people running in just covered in blood because they got hit by baseball sized hail in the parking lot! We let as many people into our store as we could even though security was running around telling everyone to close up and lock up. This happened in February and although we were in very southern Georgia it can still get cold at times and most houses don’t have fireplaces because we just normally never actually NEED them so when the storm brought a cold front and it got very very cold and the storm knocked out power of almost the whole city of around 250,000 people (including hotels), we didn’t really have anywhere to go! I had a water bed at the time and when you have a water bed you have to have a heating pad under the mattress because the bed gets extremely cold if you don’t and without power my heater obviously wasn’t working so no matter how many blankets I piled on it, it was too cold to sleep on! I was 17 at the time and my parents finally found a hotel in town that had a generator and we got a couple of rooms there for a week. All of the car dealerships in the city had most of their vehicles damaged by the hail and there were “scratch and dent” sales that went on for at least 2 years after that! Out of all the crazy weather I’d seen while growing up this on is by far the most memorable! Side note: when the storm hit my mom was driving in her brand new car and luckily was able to pull into some random persons car port in our neighborhood so she didn’t get much hail damage

I live in Houston, Texas, and we have some serious thunderstorms here. Just yesterday, I knew a whopper of a thunderstorm was coming, but I had to pick up the kids at school. It was so bad, that everyone on the road was going about 20-30 miles per hour with all of us having our hazard lights on. It was coming down so much that I was like a 90 year old, with my hands on the steering wheel at 10 and 2, leaning so close to the windshield, my chin was on the wheel. You couldn’t see more than 5 feet ahead of you. Branches were breaking from trees, and the hail was the size of golf balls. I thought my windshield was going to crack. A couple of years ago, we heard a very loud lightening strike. We looked out, and our neighbor’s tree had been struck, completely blowing all the bark off the tree. It killed the tree. Crazy weather in Texas.

2008 saw a massive storm tear through where I lived. Good thing I was 20 miles away, I only got hit with rain and damaging winds. But mom's house was hit with softball, or grapefruit if you're unfamiliar, sized hail. Totaled her roof. Would have totaled my car too, cuz it was always parked in the driveway, cuz mom's two cars were in the garage.

I’ve lived in the Virginia-DC-Maryland area most of my life (also lived in Texas, Colorado, and Utah). In the Mid-Atlantic area, we can get the remnants of hurricanes (rarely a head-on hit), tornadoes (rare compared to Tornado Alley), and heavy thunderstorms. I’ve seen hail about plum size - very disconcerting. The scary times are when you get wind with heavy thick humid air. But then a hush falls, the wind stops, and the birds+other animals go silent. It becomes very still. If you start hearing a loud noise - like a train - find shelter. Or, I remember one summer afternoon when REALLY dark clouds gathered on the horizon. It got dark like navy blue+gray. Then the sky turned pea-green+lime colors. That was one of the worst thunderstorms+hail I ever experienced. The house, especially the windows, rattled and shook as if it were a tornado.

"Mother Nature opened her legs" That had me rolling with laughter. I will never forget that line and think about it every time I HAVE to watch the weather channel.

I'm in Alabama here. 6 months after I got my current car, we had a hailstorm come through. My car has dimples now. I love thunderstorms! I am one of those people who stand outside and watch them come in. They're pretty common here and they definitely can spring up without notice.

I live in Iowa about half an hour from the town of Greenfield, a town of about 2000 people that took a direct hit from a high end F4 tornado a month ago. I also live half an hour in the opposite direction of the town of Minden, which almost got destroyed by a tornado in April. Around that same time, an F1 tornado touched down in our town for about .75 of a mile 3 blocks from our house. A few weeks ago I woke up at about 3 a.m., heard my new wind chimes clanking on the front porch and saw lightning flash, so I stepped outside to take them down before the storm hit. As soon as my hand touched the chimes, the towns tornado siren went off. Let me tell you nothing makes your hair stand up faster than that sound at 3 a.m. 😂 Fortunately it was radar indicated 10 miles south of town and didn't touch down. I love the storms...I hate the devastation they bring.

Had hail like that three weeks ago. Killer thunderstorm last night. I lived in the US all my life, and I've been through two major earthquakes, three hurricanes, countless tornadoes and thunderstorms. I grew up in the northern regions of Michigan and Canada, so blizzards are another. I've had close encounters with forest or wildfires, but I've managed to avoid avalanches, although I've lived in mountainous areas, so there's that. I left out floods, because they are a result of where you are in addition to the weather. Been through them too and helped with the clean up. Having said all that, it's just life. Wherever you live there is something that others will find to be outlandish. I've only been to London once and in the three days I was there the weather was cold by beautifully clear... an absolute contrast to the stereotypes. Live life. Enjoy nature. Be happy. Cheers!

I grew up in Chicagoland. My city was hit by a tornado twice while I lived there. One tornado went down my street, blowing out the picture windows of every other house. The school bus my siblings and I was on dropped us off just 2 minutes after the tornado went through. A large marble slab blew off the office building across the street from our house. We found it buried about 6 inches deep, like a tombstone, in our front lawn. It was removed and reattached to the building…. no cracks or breakage.

The biggest hail I ever saw was when I was growing up in Tennessee, we had a tornado come through and that same storm dropped baseball-sized hail, it was wild. At the time I was at a birthday party at a roller-skating rink. I was roller skating, they had the music cranked up, and we didn’t hear the sirens. They stopped the music and made an announcement that there was a tornado approaching and everyone needed to get off the skating floor. No sooner had they made the announcement, then the power went out. Everyone just dropped to the floor because there were no windows, no light, and we couldn’t see anything, couldn’t see where we were skating. Lots of kids started screaming, calling out names, trying to find their families in the dark. But then only a few seconds later the hail began. The building had a metal roof, and the sound was so deafening that it drowned out the screams. A staff member was able to open an exterior door which let some light in. The hail lasted a few minutes and shortly after it ended and we all were able to get to our families. When we went outside to survey the damage the hail was deep and completely covered the ground, it almost looked like snow. Not a single car windshield in the parking lot survived.

I live in central Iowa. Fortunately, I have not seen hail bigger than quarter size. We usually get pea size to quarter size hail. So imagine suddenly hearing about baseball size hail in Iowa. Not near me, but just in Iowa. That was a year or two ago. And the winds were blowing hard, around 60 mph, so it punched a lot of holes in the sides of houses and broke a lot of windows. One year I was working a job that took me to Nebraska, and our boss took us early in the morning to go to a job in a small town, and we got there and there was a parking lot with a single white sporty car, and a line of trees near it. The trees were stripped of almost every leaf, and and the car literally looked like a golf ball. The spacing of the dents was probably 2 inches or less. And when we came into town, at first, everything looked normal, but then we saw a sudden line where the storm had passed through and trees had been badly damaged or stripped of leaves. Here at least in my neighborhood, when we get severe lightning storms, the sound is like someone dropping bombs on us for half an hour or longer. It is constant, one after another. It sounds like it is the next house over. That lightning and thunder would terrify anybody. These last few weeks have been exhausting because of the tornado warnings, one after another. One night my alarm went off something like 10 - 20 times in the space of a few hours. Many of them were about a minute apart. Some were Severe Thunderstorm warnings, but there were a quite a few Tornado warnings. And it was at night, which is unusual for us. That is in addition to the derecho in 2020 that blew through here. I've never seen 80 foot trees bend over so far. Usually we get strong 50/60 mph winds in the spring/summer that blow off the dead branches, and that was what I thought it was. But wow, it just kept on going and going for about half an hour. It was incredible to watch.

Michigan here. Have seen 7 tornados in my life (64 years old). One took out the tree in front of my house as well as about 40 others on my street. Largest hail I've seen was about the size of a tennis ball. And yes, what we cover our cars with for protection is called a garage. Be safe!!

When living in Florida, I saw many tails but no developing tornadoes. We now live in West Virginia where I thought we were safe. The first tornado I saw happened when I was down on the lower part of our front yard. Our property like almost all of WV is on a hillside. I didn’t hear anything, but I did look up and saw branches above my head swirling around. I thought it looked like a tornado. It was. Driving around later, we saw damage at the bottom of our hill along the Monongahela river. It hit houses doing some damage, went up over our property without doing any damge, tore trees down at our neighbor’s, and then traveled down Interstate 68 where it took out pine trees the whole way, ending up destroying a university in Maryland. It was classified there as a weak f4. Three more hit around our property with the final one causing a tree to hit our roof. Our insurance gave us a new roof. All this happen within 15 years of moving here

I'm in Virginia, we don't see very many tornadoes here, but get smaller ones every now and then. We did get that Derecho that he mentioned in 2020 when it made it's way to the east coast. Weather was completely fine, then out of nowhere the power flickered off and when I looked outside, the sky looked so weird, it was almost a green color, then the wind hit, it looked like the trees were laying down. Then the rain and hail came, some of the hail was just a little smaller than a ping pong ball. It cause power to be out for several days. It was so crazy! As for thunderstorms, we get them pretty regularly in the spring and summer, mostly when it's really hot outside.

FT. Worth, Tx. We had a Tornado that tore nearly 3/4 of the windows out of the high rise buildings. It took forever to have them replaced. My old house had large oak trees and we had a derecho wind knock one over roots and all. Scared the crap out of us. Moved south to Cleburne, Tx and we were hit by 2 small tornados tearing trees up and ripping the roofs off the houses on our property. You can’t get away from them in north Texas.

yep, when I was a kid, I lived in the panhandle of Texas. It is severely flat out there. Weather does not sneak up on you. We would see a Thunderstorm develop on the horizon and as it moved, the tornado would drop out of the back side of the cloud, like a scorpion's tail. May and early June, was the primary development condition for these storms and it was not uncommon for us to spend 4-5 nights each week at the neighborhood storm shelter for an hour or so. When a Tornado is developing in a Thunderstorm, you can feel it. One night, I woke my wife and told her to go get our older kids and move them into our closet. I got the youngest. She didn't protest, but a few seconds after we were in the closet, the Tornado sirens went off. She asked me how I knew, and I tried to explain. The sound is below hearing, and the pressure drop probably has something to do as well. It is a low rumble that started and lasted a minute or so. The funnel touched down about 500 yards West of us. and only stayed on the ground for a few seconds. It freaked her out, but it was nothing I hadn't been through countless times. A tornado is just a concentrated low pressure cell. They are nothing to scoff at. Most are associated with hail in some way or another since the rapidly rising air column is what causes both.

I love storm chasing. A sign that the severe storm is going to start raining and storming (besides hearing the thunder in the distance) is the wind picks up bad. That's the shelf cloud coming overhead and the wind ramps up. Once the shelf cloud passes, the downpour starts.

I live in ND and tornadoes and thunderstorms and hail are not a weekly occurrence but definitely normal as we get them every year. Usually, no damage. I remember back around 2002 I was working at a call center on the northern edge of town. Further north was just farmer fields. We were warned to cease work and shelter but since our building was primarily glass and there was no safe place in the building, we just went to the window and watched 2 tornadoes touch down in the field to our north and then back up into the sky without damage. The following year, the town I had lived in previously (Oklahoma City) got a large tornado that did some damage but thankfully, left my friends alone (one of which was interviewed on the news and I saw them in ND)

I live in Missouri and bad storms can regularly produce golf ball size hail. The other day it wasnt even really a storm, just strong rain, and some pea sized hail just started coming down too.

I live in the Southeastern U.S. On April 27, 2011, during a record 3-4-day tornado outbreak across the U.S., an EF4 passed less than five miles from my home, destroying most of a town on its way, and an EF1 passed directly behind my parents' house (they had some hail damage to their siding and lost some roof shingles, that was all). On Easter Sunday night 2020, an EF3 also passed less than five miles from my home. But that's the only tornado activity in my area in the 23 years I've lived here.

I live in Texas, and a couple weeks ago we had storm systems that moved across the state and in isolated spots, there was grapefruit sized hail. We had golf ball sized hail here where I live, as well as a couple tornadoes, and 80 mph winds. Not to mention the almost 3 inches of rain we got over the span of an hour and a half

Atlanta, GA USA a place you can experience all four seasons in one day. Last year around late April/early May torrential rain with hail. The hail was 2-3 inches thick. The rain so bad i thought I needed a boat for my car. 15-20 minutes then it looked like nothing happened. Including tropical storms Atlanta averages 30 severe weather events per year. Up to 6 tornadoes in the Atlanta Metropolitan area, though luckily no F5 tornadoes have been registered in Georgia. Though Atlanta has never felt the full force of Hurricane sustained winds, depending on the path of the hurricane Atlanta does experience Tropical Storms sustained winds.

Having a garage is very high on the list of essentials, especially out here in Kansas. A lot of apartment parking lots have covered sections (basically just metal sheet on thin struts over the spaces) as well. The hail is no joke. We had one storm hit about 10 years ago, and in the space of about 20 minutes it blew out all of the front and back windows of the cars in our apartment parking lot. My wife found golf ball-sized hail inside of her car's headlight housings.

I live in Florida, extreme weather is a way of life. Heat undex was 116°F yesterday (May 9) at 4 pm. Lightning is a major issue. I have seen hail the size of golf balls many times. Hurricanes are devastating. I lived 2 miles ftom the eye when Ian came ashore in 2022. Ian destroyed Ft. Myers Beach, Sanabel, Pine Island, and flooded (8 to 12 feet deep) miles inshore. 2 years later we are still recovering and are looking at a forcasted VERY busy hurricane season this year.

Fort Worth, Texas here. Texas is the southern boundary of what is called the tornado alley. It's been over 30 years but there was a tornado/hailstorm that really pelted southwestern Fort Worth. It did $5 Billion worth of damage in about 50 minutes of baseball-sized and smaller hail with destructive winds.

I remember the massive hailstone in Vivian, SD, it's just a couple hours west of me. Just a couple years ago the tree in my front yard blew over due to 90-110 mph winds, and that wasn't even a tornado. Our weather here is crazy, man.

Yes, I experience this annually. 3 days ago, the sirens sounded. There were 7 tornados, the closest was 30 miles from my home.

About 5 or 6 years ago when I was at work we had a tornado go past across the street. There was hail damage on all of our vehicles and it ripped the roofs off of several buildings in the area. Another year we had a hail storm that punctured holes in the siding of our house. Thankfully it wasn't too bad so we just calked the handful of holes that we got but others in the area had to replace siding and/or roofs.

I live in Nebraska, last year in May 2 Tornadoes hit our farm and we lost all our buildings and a good amount of trees. Our home wasn't damaged because we live in a Dome home. We found a baby kitten was blown in from the Tornado, glad to say he lived and is now part of our family. But yeah lived in Eastern Nebraska all my life, you just sorta get used to storms and the danger it brings. We get hail as big as baseballs.

We have large storms in Pennsylvania. Not as frequently as the mid-west. My son lives outside Austin, Texas. Last year they had hail the size of baseballs. Two of his skylights were blown out, he had a large hole in his roof where the dryer vent went through the roof and the gutter was collapsed and ripped off on side of his roof. Every car in the neighborhood had broken windows and 5 were totaled by insurance. His neighbor had just bought and fixed up a mini to do local auto cross racing. The roof was beaten in almost 4 inches where the windshield mounted. A total loss.

I went to college in Central Illinois, which is right in "Tornado Alley", and we buckled down for warnings several times, but everything was okay. Many years later, I was teaching college and one Spring went on a "Storm Chase" for 21 days. We traveled from Wyoming to Arizona chasing tornadoes. Several times we had large hail on the trucks, and drove toward the funnel instead of away. Terrifying but so exciting!! Had fun, would never do it again. Surprisingly, now that I live in Houston Texas, last month we had a small tornado touch down just 6 miles away from our home and the power was out for an entire week! 🤠

We've had a lot of storms for the past week, including most of the night last night. Some of the thunder was pretty impressive. A few weeks ago we had a tornado, which the affected area is still cleaning up after. It ripped roofs off of condos, flattened trees and power poles, and wrecked docks and boat houses on the lake.

I live in Rogers Park in Chicago, and a few years ago I noticed that many cars parked on the street had dimples all over their sheet metal from the previous day's hail storm. Our streets are lined with large old trees and fallen leafy branches are often seen after a windy thunderstorm.

I'm in Texas we have storms like that quite often .. Just a week or so back we had multiple storms that spawned tornadoes and one such storm produced hail that was as big as a cantolope . The hail by itself wrecked peoples cars AND houses . Hail that large will make holes in your roof and blast right down into your living room, bedroom etc.. So even if your car is in your garage it can still get wrecked !!

Born and raised in Oklahoma (kind of the epicenter for massive, strong storms and tornadoes). Its been a few years since I've seen hail at all, or at least large hail. I have pretty small hands, but I've held hailstones in my hand that were as big as my palm (probably half the size of that 8" hailstone mentioned in the video). I've also seen my yard covered in small stones that made it look like snow. In high school, a severe storm swept through during school hours. We went outside to check our vehicles after it blew through. All of our cars had hail damage (mine was only minor) and my best friend's car (who had parked right next to me) had an incredibly deep dent in her door or roof (I don't remember) that missed her windshield by maybe a cm. Other vehicles nearby had windows completely blown out. I watched my neighbor's small shed just pick up and float away during a storm once. It's also rained so heavily I couldn't see past the front porch. Side note: I live about 15 mins from El Reno (where the nasty 2013 tornado hit) and 30 mins from Moore (where the other 2013 tornado--and the 1999 May 3rd tornado--hit). We're so used to this stuff here, most people don't even bat an eyelash at it (unless of course you have trauma related to it). Most people aren't even phased when the sirens go off. We certainly pay attention, but this is so regular we're basically used to it.

I've lived in tornado alley most my life. I lived in Parker, SD during the 2003 outbreak that produced 67 tornadoes in Eastern South dakota alone, 2 of them hitting the town I lived in. I've personally seen little over a dozen tornadoes, and spent 6 years chasing storms for a local news team in Sioux falls. I moved to Nebraska this year, and saw first hand thr April 26th outbreak that dropped 26 tornadoes within only a few hours that devastated the omaha area. And several derichos. The weather here is intense. Sometimes terrifying, sometimes beautiful. But never boring or dull. 😊 if you ever come to the states, I invite you to my area and we can chase a few storms together :) it's definitely bucket list worthy and an unforgettable experience

Had big storms roll through last night along with lightning and tornado warnings. I'm in Tennessee, and big storms are common. Some are like the supercells in the Midwest. Hail the size of lemons happens about every summer somewhere around here. About a week ago I watched a storm go by that was rotating as a tornado formed a couple of miles from me.

My favorite thing about hail in my area is that golfball size is the starting benchmark, and then the more severe the storm, the bigger the hail gets.

In Oklahoma cars are routinely totaled due to hail damage. It's largely cosmetic but they still total it.

I live in North Texas. The tornado that ripped through the area last week just missed us by 10 miles. Two days later we had straight line winds in the hurricane force range, there is video footage of the wind pushing passenger jets around on the ground at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, and two days after that there was torrential rainfall rivaling that of a monsoon. The weather in tornado alley has become much worse over the years, it's very violent now. Hail stones ranging in size from small stones to golf ball size is not unusual and soft ball size hail is reported every year. Car dealerships now have covers to prevent so much loss from hail damage and after a storm, many windshields must be replaced and house roofs repaired. It really is that bad.

I got stuck outside a house during a tornado in Chicago when I was about 4. It was after my great-grandma's funeral. As we were leaving the gravesite, it got dark as night with black clouds. When we were driving back to my aunt's place, we could see the tornado outside the car window. It was probably only an F-2, but it terrified the hell out of me!! Unfortunately, my parents and I were the first ones back to the house, which was locked, so we stood on the porch, ready to get in as soon as anyone with a key got there, me sobbing and pounding on the door, thinking that the tornado was coming to kill me. It was pretty traumatic, as you can tell since I still remember it vividly 35 years later lol