Hail season: when it peaks and which states it hits hardest

Where hail hits hardest depends on how you count. NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory says Nebraska, Colorado and Wyoming usually have the most hailstorms. "Hail alley," where the three meet, averages seven to nine hail days a year. Count every hail event of 1 inch or larger across a whole state and Texas leads, with 902 in 2025. Texas also topped the National Insurance Crime Bureau's 2016 to 2018 hail claim count and State Farm's 2025 hail payouts.

What counts as "severe" hail

On January 5, 2010, the National Weather Service raised the minimum hail size for a severe thunderstorm warning to 1 inch across, quarter-size, up from the old 3/4-inch, penny-size cutoff. A thunderstorm is officially "severe" if it produces a tornado, wind of at least 58 mph, or hail at least 1 inch across. Any one of the three is enough on its own.

How fast hail falls depends on its size, drag, the wind and how much it has melted. Wind-tunnel research with 3D-printed casts of real hailstones, summarized by NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory, found that natural hailstones fall more slowly than solid ice spheres. Typical severe hail, 1 to 1 3/4 inches, is expected to fall at 25 to 40 mph. Stones of 2 to 4 inches, from the strongest storms, fall at 44 to 72 mph. Stones over 4 inches can top 100 mph, though NOAA notes much uncertainty in these estimates. Wind changes the angle, too: in strong surface wind, hail can fall at a slant or nearly sideways, and wind-driven hail can break a car's side windows.

Where hail hits most

Florida has the most thunderstorms, but NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory says Nebraska, Colorado and Wyoming usually have the most hailstorms, and "hail alley," where the three states meet, averages seven to nine hail days a year. A count of big-hail events across each whole state ranks them differently. In 2025, Texas logged 902 hail events of 1 inch or larger, more than any other state. Kansas (375) and Oklahoma (369) came next, with Nebraska fourth (315) and Colorado sixth (244). Nationwide there were 5,432, up from 5,373 in 2024.

When hail season peaks

Nationally, hail claims peak in May, then June. In the National Insurance Crime Bureau's review of claims from January 2016 through December 2018, May had the highest monthly average, 203,296 hail claims, and June was next at 178,881, ahead of April at 164,232. Near hail alley, the season peaks in summer. Across the National Weather Service's Cheyenne forecast area, which covers southeast Wyoming and western Nebraska, June had the most hail reports from 2000 to 2023 and July was second. Hail there has been reported as early as March and as late as October, and 4 PM local time is the most common hour for it.

Where the claims land

State Farm alone paid out more than $5.6 billion in hail claims in 2025. By the Insurance Information Institute's count, that was about $600 million more than in 2024, when State Farm paid more than $3.8 billion for home repairs and over $1.2 billion for auto repairs. Texas was its top state for 2025 hail claims, followed by Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin and Oklahoma. In an earlier three-year window, January 2016 through December 2018, the National Insurance Crime Bureau's review of insurance claims data counted 2,891,291 hail loss claims, 898,500 of them on personal auto policies. Five states led that count.

The record stone

The largest hailstone on record in the US fell in Vivian, South Dakota, at about 6 PM CDT on July 23, 2010. It measured 8.0 inches across and 18.625 inches around, and weighed 1 pound 15 ounces. The committee that verified it noted it was almost certainly larger when it landed, since it had partly melted before it was measured. The same storm brought winds to 80 mph and a brief tornado to Vivian, and several vehicles on nearby I-90 took major damage, with some dents measuring 10 inches across. The stone broke the national diameter record of 7.0 inches, set in Aurora, Nebraska, on June 22, 2003, though the Aurora stone kept the record for circumference.

Planning around hail season

Comprehensive coverage, not collision, is the part of an auto policy that pays for hail damage to a car, so confirm it is active before the season starts. For what to do with the car in the hours before a storm, see what to do with your car before a hailstorm hits. For the storm weather between hail days, wind, rain and blowing grit, see what an AllGuard cover does in that weather. Hail is only one season on the calendar. Our weather guide covers how the rest of the year treats a parked car.

For hail specifically, our sister brand HailProtector makes an inflatable system built for it