Record-breaking hailstorm pelts Mon Valley
Mike Jones/Observer-Reporter
Hez Cowell points to the hail damage on the back of his detached garage next to his Roscoe home following Sunday afternoon’s thunderstorm.
Mike Jones/Observer-Reporter
This house on Route 88 in Roscoe was pelted by hail during Sunday’s thunderstorm.
Photo courtesy of Tom Mueller
Tom Mueller, a geography professor with PennWest University in California, holds a hail stone that fell Sunday afternoon outside his campus office.
Hail bigger than golf balls pelted homes and vehicles in the Mon Valley during Sunday afternoon’s thunderstorms in what weather forecasters say were the largest hailstones ever recorded in Western Pennsylvania in November.
The record-breaking hailstorm stretched from California to Greensburg with the largest stones measuring 2 inches in diameter near Perryopolis.
Evan Bookbinder, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh, said they began digging into their record books Monday morning and could not find any hail stones that large to ever hit this region in October or November. It was also the latest date that 2-inch hail has ever been recorded in Pennsylvania, and only the second time it’s happened in November, when the eastern part of the state was hit by a storm in 1977.
“It was an usual event for November,” Bookbinder said of the size of the hail. “It’s certainly unusual regardless of time of year.”
There were numerous reports of broken windows, damaged siding on houses and pock-marked vehicles, Bookbinder said. The bulk of the worst damage was centered around Perryopolis, but there were reports of hail-related damage near California, along with high winds that blew part of a roof off of a structure in Allenport.
Tom Mueller, a geography professor with PennWest University in California, was working on campus about 2:30 p.m. Sunday when he noticed the sky darken as the wind picked up.
“All of a sudden, I saw something falling outside my window. I thought, ‘It’s too warm to be snow.’ Then it started bouncing and it came down really fast,” Mueller said. “It wasn’t long, but enough to see the impacts on the street.”
He went outside and noticed a few dents on his vehicle, and other people who were on campus during the storm reported similar damage. Buildings on campus also sustained damage, PennWest spokesperson Wendy Mackall said. She reported that two skylight windows at the student center were damaged, along about a half-dozen windows in buildings elsewhere on campus. A greenhouse atop Frich Hall also was affected by the storm, as were “numerous” vehicles parked across campus that had pockmarks, including several of the school’s police vehicles.
“Basically, if you were a car or a structure, you received hail damage,” Mackall said.
A golf ball is nearly 1-3/4 inches in diameter, a similar size to the hail that was observed in California, according to weather service data. There were other reports in Roscoe, where the western facing sides of many houses and buildings along Route 88 that looked like that had been hit by shotgun blasts.
Hez Cowell found that type of damage to the siding of his home at 208 Furlong Ave., along with a detached garage that had even more holes ripping into the siding. He and others were out Monday morning assessing the damage, and he pointed over to his neighbor’s house where the metal side door looked like it had been riddled with bullets.
“I didn’t get it as bad as others, but I got some damage. I was fortunate,” Cowell said. “I’m 70 years old and I don’t remember anything like this.”
Like many others, Cowell had already contacted his insurance company to turn in the damage that would likely be very costly due to the widespread storm. He was thankful that his windows survived since the screens appeared to take the brunt of the force from the hail.
“Oh, well. What are you gonna do?” Cowell said. “That’s mother nature for ya.”