Blaine County sees tennis ball-sized hail Sunday

The Blaine County area saw golfball- to tennis ball-sized hail Sunday evening causing damage to crops and property.

National Weather Service Meteorologist Austin McDowell said reports of hail were submitted to the service between 8:20 p.m. and 9:19 p.m. that evening, and based on his reading of the radar activity it seems like the hail may have fallen throughout the whole hour, or close to it.

McDowell said they received reports from Chinook and the surrounding areas, including Fort Belknap, of hail between 1.25 inches in diameter to 2.5 inches in diameter with the biggest being classified by the Weather Service as “tennis ball-sized.”

He said Chinook seemed to have the biggest reported hail size while Fort Belknap had the smallest.

He said he’d heard that a lot of people in the area were filing insurance claims for damage, but outside of that the service doesn’t have any data on how much damage was inflicted across the area.

McDowell said hail this size is usually only seen once or twice a year in north-central Montana.

Blaine County Disaster and Emergency Services Manager Haley Velk said she didn’t receive any reports of serious damage relevant to her department, and neither did the Blaine County Road and Bridge Department.

Velk said she definitely had some damage to her property and crops, as did a staff member of hers, but she doesn’t know how the rest of the county fared.

Montana State University Blaine County Extension Agriculture Agent Julianne Snedigar said she’s still gathering reports, but she hasn’t heard anything particularly devastating yet.

She said the worst of the hail was in Chinook proper and the severity was pretty varied across the county so she can’t really give any ballpark estimates on the level of damage to local crops yet.