Summer turns to winter: Hailstorm drops temperature from 90s to 50s

Jesse Ferrell

30 May 2024 at 2:24 pm·1-min read

A hailstorm creates a winterlike landscape, dropping the temperature from the 90s into the 50s on May 29, 2024, in Marathon, Texas. (Harry Weinman)

Temperature graph for the evening of May 29, 2024. (AccuWeather/AmbientWeather)

When a thunderstorm hits on a hot day, it can quickly reduce the temperature from 90 degrees Fahrenheit to 70, but to get much colder, you need hail -- and a lot of it.

Harry Weinman witnessed such a storm on Wednesday evening in Marathon, Texas. Weinman told AccuWeather that his car thermometer dropped from 93 to 53 degrees in a few minutes. Quarter-sized hail piled up several inches deep and stripped leaves from the trees, changing the landscape into what looked like a winter wonderland.

A hail storm creates a winterlike landscape, dropping the temperature from the 90s into the 50s on May 29, 2024, in Marathon, Texas. (Harry Weinman)

A rare weather condition called "hail fog" soon transpired, caused by the hail cooling the surrounding air to its dew point.

A nearby Ambient Weather station in the northeastern part of the town reported a drop from 84 F to 62 F -- 22 degrees -- in only five minutes. Thirty minutes later, that same station reported a chilly 55 degrees. Other weather stations in the area showed similar drops in a short amount of time, some as much as 37 degrees lower than before the storm.

Temperature graph for the evening of May 29, 2024. (AccuWeather/AmbientWeather)

AccuWeather has partnered with Ambient Weather on a landmark collaboration in the field of hyperlocal weather reporting, with the densest network of over 100,000 private weather stations across the country that are now utilized as a key source of AccuWeather's ground truth data, providing data and insights into hyper-local weather conditions on the ground, such as this event. Get your weather station today.

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