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Devin Singleton / KAMR
Meltwater rushes past hail several feet thick on Wednesday off Highway 287 north of Amarillo, Texas.
Sure, everything's bigger in Texas. But 4 feet of hail from one storm? That's what the National Weather Service, the Texas Department of Transportation, a local sheriff and others say happened Wednesday in an area north of Amarillo when hail piled up in drifts so wide they cut off a major highway.
The National Weather Service office in Amarillo even posted a photo on its Facebook page, but that wasn't enough to convince skeptics.
"Serious do not think this is 100% hail!!!" commented one person.
"It's a lite dusting of hail on some damn rocks," said another person, referring to the image of a firefighter standing next to what could be taken for boulders.
Potter County Fire Department via NWS
The National Weather Service's office in Amarillo, Texas, posted this photo Wednesday night of a firefighter standing next to deep hail.
"I can assure you we do not have big rocks like that in West Texas," Krissy Scotten, a spokeswoman for the weather service office in Amarillo, told msnbc.com.
"That was 4 feet of ice" that was compacted by rain and floodwater across a wide area, she added.
"It was actually the rain/water that caused the drifts," Scotten said. "Anytime you have hail accumulate 2 to 4 feet high and get over three inches of rain, no matter how it occurs, it's pretty incredible."
As for the darkish color, "we're very dusty around here" due to drought so the hail quickly darkened, Scotten said.
The image, she added, was sent by the Potter County Fire Department and Matt Dryden, the firefighter seen in it, is standing where meltwater had cut through the hail.
"It was like rivers of hail," Dryden told msnbc.com. "It looked like icebergs coming across the highway."
The Texas Department of Transportation confirms it was deep hail dumped by a storm that dropped visibility to near-zero at times.
Texas Department of Transportation
This highway webcam image was taken at 4:10 p.m. local time Wednesday and shows hail on Highway 287.
"Heavy rain and up to 4 ft of hail has US 287 blocked north of Amarillo," it tweeted Wednesday afternoon.
The local sheriff concurred as well.
"You're looking at four foot deep" hail in one stretch, NBC affiliate KAMR-TV quoted Brian Thomas, sheriff of Potter County, as saying. "This was just one of those weird storms that just sat here and came down extremely heavy in this one area."
Amarillo TV station Pronews 7 even shot video of flash flooding triggered by the pea-sized hail and several inches of rain.
"It looked like soap suds," said Pronews 7 meteorologist Steve Kersh. "The storm was moving really slow and a combination of the pea-sized hail and four to six inches of rain created those conditions."
KAMR-TV reported that snow plows were called out to clear roads. Highway 287 was shut down for hours after the storm due to the cleanup.
Several vehicles got stuck in the flash flooding, and two feet of water also swamped a stretch of Highway 136, the weather service reported. One Chevy Tahoe, a large SUV, got stuck in hail up to its hood, Scotten said.
Krissy Scotten / National Weather Service
Covered in dust, this hail drift measured six feet high on April 12 and was still intact a day after it formed near Dumas, Texas, the National Weather Service said.
The pea-sized hailstones weren't big enough to set any size records, and Scotten said the service doesn't keep records for most hail in a given period.
But Jose Garcia, chief forecaster at the weather service in Amarillo, told msnbc.com it probably wasn't the most hail the region has seen.
"Five to 6 feet deep hail" fell in nearby Dalhart, Texas, in 1993 during a very similar storm, he said. It took almost a month for some roads to reopen as the compact ice melted slowly. "It was almost like huge snow drifts," he said.
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Wait...I thought it was a perfectly even covering of exactly 48" of hail over every surface..... You mean...you mean it was thicker in some places and thinner in others?
Oh, the horror.
Global Climate Change = more extreme weather patterns and more extreme denial from conservatives.
And more extreme predictions from morons.
If you have evidence, put it out there. But I still ask for an answer: WHAT IS THE CORRECT CLIMATE? and when was that climate occurring here on earth? Yes the temperature will go up and down. Get your mommy to read you the story about the glaciers, and how far they melted back to before humans were here on earth. Did the Dinosaurs have SUV's, Pattycake?
hate to burst a buble but check out the fence line in the background. Do they put up an 8 ft fence on the ranches in west Texas? I now everything is bigger here but I have not seen a long horn that big.
I've seen fences like that and not even in Texas. If you have deer in Wisconsin you must have a 12 foot fence along the road. As in a deer park or deer hunting camp or wildlife refuge. Those dang deer wouldn't even be slowed by a six foot fence.
Speaking of bubble bursting.... Look at the picture again. See that handsome gentleman standing in the foreground, in front of the hail, wearing a fire suit, with his arm resting on top of the hail? So how tall would you guess that Texan to be?
Honestly, how many more people are going to make this stupid fencepost comment?!
I agree that the picture shows nothing. Up here in the North we have blizzards. One Halloween we got 36 inches of snow. Believe me there were places where the wind wiped the snow clean down to the ground, and places where 2 story houses were covered. NEVER does the snow depth hit an even figure everywhere. Maybe in the woods it comes closer, because the wind and other factors are lessened. How many hilltops are bare with 8 feet of snow in the valleys? Lots, in open country.
It hailed. Not the record amount of hail, but a real remarkable hailstorm. Doesn't prove or disprove anything. Doesn't make the weather service any less credible than they already are. They can't predict the weather 2 days from now, and they don't even report what happened accurately. Yet...they have global warming all figured out.
The cows thought it was snow and froze to death.
"It'll wash you away, and there ain't ever enough"--Steve Earle commenting on rainfall tendencies in Texas ("The Rain Came Down"). Looks like that applies to precipitation in all its forms in Texas.
As prolific as it was this doesnt hold a candle to a hail storm in the late 1800's described as the mother of all hail storms.Drifts were higher than 10 feet with 5 and 6 foot depths being common.It happened in the same general area as this one.It would take the mother of the mother of hail storms to match or surpass that one.
proof that hell is freezing over, ie republican controlled texas.
Islandselect I dare you to go to Wood county Wis on hwy 54 and hwy X you will see 12 foot high fences because of deer. A four foot fence wouldn't slow my dog much less a deer which those fences are for. Try googling deer fencing.
Once again the texans prove they're "full of it". The pictures prove the stories a hoax. For one thing, if the hail was four feet deep, the fence posts in the background would have been buried, but they're not.
For another thing, that much hail would have stripped all the leaves and bark off all the trees and shrubs - yet there are lots of green bushes apparent in the photos.
Thirdly, if there was still four feet of hail on the ground as claimed, the ravine the young fireman's standing in would not be dry - yet it is. For you texans that would say "but the other photo shows a man standing in running water with four feet of hail" - you're going to have to explain why the photo of the young fireman, whose also alledgedly standing in a ravine next to four feet of hail, isn't running any water.
All in all, just another "texas tall tale".
Oh for god's sake, shoot me now. I've met fenceposts that are smarter.
rick-331120
maybe you have never heard of flash floods? they occur suddenly and dissipate rapidly, hence the descriptive title, flash. Once the water had cut its own path through the drift of hail it was free to flow onward and seep in to the very dry ground in the area as well as evaporate. In order for drifts to form some of the precip must be blown on the wind from one area(near and around the fenceposts) and be deposited in another area(the ditch). I can see no reason to disbelieve this story from the photos. I do agree that the reporting and the title are a bit misleading but I have come to expect that from msnbc, kind of like being a meteorologist, you only need to get it half right half of the time and the checks will just keep on rolling in.
Dothemaths, I think you need to get your eyes examined - it's obvious to anyone with good depth perception that the fence posts in the background are about 4 feet above the ground surface - which also just happens to be the normal height for prairie fences throughout texas - I know because I've been thru the whole state several times and seen the fences there. The fence in the pictures is not 8 or 12 feet high by any stretch of the imagine - unless of course you've been smoking "loco weed" - LOL!
Ttub. the point is - both photos supposedly show four feet of hail. Obivously if it is hail it's still melting, and the flood waters wouldn't dry up until the hail has finished melting.
Rick, anybody who's ever lived in places that actually get hail, ice or snow knows this story is crap. And I've seen deer fences, but never in the middle of a pasture. Good lord.
What difference does it make. The deer are gonna walk across on the hail and kill us all.
You got that right - if those deer survived all that hail, they can survive anything and I don't think we can do a thing to stop them! LOL!
Hail yeah.
LMAO!
No such thing as global warming. liberals...
Those that keep referring to global warming are missing the point. Global warming and global cooling have been happening throughout earth's history, as core samples will show. It's not caused by man, but is a natural phenomenon.
Are we really sure it isn't Aril 1st? I just can't swollow this story. Hail a common occurence in my state, never have seen 1 foot deep let alone this fish tale. Seriously, this is too funny.
Another "tall tale" from Texas, amazing they did not claim that the hail was the size of basket-balls, bowling-balls and soccer-balls,or maybe "medicine-balls".
Since when is precipitation measured by the height of the drifts or the flood waters? The measurement of inches or feet of precipitation is done on undisturbed flat ground, not places where the wind or water has piled it up. It makes for exciting headlines but that 4 feet of hail was probably only a few inches: somewhat impressive but not amazing.
That fireman in the second picture is FREAKIN' hot!!
I cannot wait until December 21st passes. I will laugh out loud directly at those paranoid people and point my finger at them while I do it. Nothing is going to happen people, just another day.
In the photo with the firefighter leaning on the "hail", it sure looks like those fence posts in the background are sitting on the hail.
Thats what I thought! Maybe...the fence was built right after lol
This is all W's fault somehow.
I can attest to this picture as it was taken a few miles from where I live. Yes, the fence posts are higher, yes this is in a bar-ditch on the side of the road. The amount of rain we received along with the hail has caused the hail to remain in tact as the firefighter leans on it. It's quite hilarious how many of you are from no where around here and can not attest to the weather we have. I'm sure you believe the hurricane in Louisiana was fake too. Your jokes about God hating us and the Republicans we have here are immature. I am very thankful for the moisture we got as we have been going through the driest year any of us could imagine. Many of our livelihood's depend on this moisture to survive and make a paycheck, which many of you would know nothing about sitting at a desk caring less if you received rain.
The hail is "4 ft".. and the fence is sticking up, what, a good 2-3 ft above that? Yea, that makes sense, I've seen plenty of 6 ft fences before. BTW.. Not everyone commenting is stupid and has never been/lived in Texas. So, try to enjoy your coffee without a major heart attack over some stupid story that nobody will care about tomorrow
Sarah-2751483 Needs a sense of Humour, relax lass,relax!! :-)
I might be stupid here...but I am confused by the picture of the firefighter standing in the 4 ft of hail...simply because if it were 4 ft of hail, wouldn't the fence in the background be covered as well?
i call b.s. unless they can prove (in two of the photos) that behind the fireman are the tops of power poles, who would run a fenceline on top of 4 feet of hail?
Brad, maybe the fenceline was installed before the hail, as opposed to on top of the hail as you question. And maybe those that live locally and attest to 12' fences are correct.
Only in Taxas!!!
I still remember back in 2005 when central TX. got whipped with snow, and it took me close to 4 hours to get from Austin to Killeen, because all of the cars were sliding off the road. On TX. 195, a car slipped off the road during a curve where a house still sits, and I also helped a stranded man get to downtown Killeen, because his 4x4 was trying to go in circles instead of straight. That was a wild ride. I really believe that storm in Amarillo, because there's hardly nothing there to break the wind when a snow storm does come.
This has happened in Western South Dakota. Heavy rains wash the hail into the draws and it piles up. 4 to 6 foot drifts are a site to see.
I wonder what would happen if 4 feet of hail fell on Dallas?