We are used to bringing you pictures of earthly scars produced by tornadoes and wildfires, but did you know that hail damage can also leave behind a trail of destruction?
That's what happened on July 10, 2025, in southwestern North Dakota.
A strong thunderstorm swept eastward from near the Montana state line then passed just south of Dickinson before weakening north of Mott. As visualized by satellites in the days after the storms, the hail scar was measured to be around 42 miles long by the National Weather Service in Bismarck.
The thunderstorm produced hail larger than chicken eggs near South Heart, South Dakota, where windows were broken.
The storm also produced wind gusts over 50 mph and heavy rain. More windows were broken by wind-driven hail near the Montana border.
This isn't the first time we've reported on a hail scar in the Dakotas.
In 2018, much more potent hailstorms dropped stones as large as grapefruits in Wyoming and South Dakota and knocked down a cornfield. Those storms traveled several hundred miles.
Most of the damage from these storms, both this year and in 2018, appears to have been to agriculture and forestry.
"Over the past few years, according to industry sources, we've seen $8 billion to $10 billion in insured and agricultural losses annually from hail alone," Bryan Wood, meteorologist and operations analyst with Assurant, Inc., told weather.com in July 2017.
The threat for significant hail peaks in late May in the southern Great Plains, but peaks later, in late June and early July, across the Dakotas. That's when the jet stream is in Canada and the hottest weather of the year persists across much of the country.
Jonathan Belles has been a digital meteorologist for weather.com for 9 years and also assists in the production of videos for The Weather Channel en español. His favorite weather is tropical weather, but also enjoys covering high-impact weather and news stories and winter storms. He's a two-time graduate of Florida State University and a proud graduate of St. Petersburg College.
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