Many in the Fort Worth, Texas area were awoken this morning not by their alarm clocks, but by the sound of hail pounding their roofs and windows. Multiple reports mention hail anywhere from golf ball to baseball size. Hail this large can cause a lot of damage to cars, buildings, vegetation and more.

There was so much hail this morning, that it looked like it had snowed in Fort Worth. While much of the hail was small, those caught in the worst of the storm encountered hail large enough to break car windows and do roof damage. Any who recently planted flowers or vegetable gardens will more than likely have to start over. Large hail and small plants don't go well together. 

In the above RadarScope image, you can see all the colors of the rainbow displayed in reflectivity. Unfortunately, this St. Patrick's Day rainbow did not lead to a pot of gold (unless you're in the roofing or paintless dent repair business). Seems like the leprechauns were causing mischief on the residents here. 

Large hail can be extremely damaging. Can you imagine being hit in the head by a piece of solid ice the size of those shown here? Unfortunately, many farmers lose livestock when hail like this falls. Crops are damaged. Roofs are destroyed. Car windows shatter. Insurance costs mount. 

This map shows Fort Worth in the heart of a damaging hail swath. WDT is at the forefront of severe weather and now offers the latest in-house dual-pol algorithms to accomplish stunningly accurate street-level hail maps for use by those in the roofing, construction and other industries. Our contours are produced from proprietary hail algorithms utilizing high resolution dual-pol radar data at all elevation scans from the NWS. The computing clusters process this information in real-time, outputting reliable hail swath data every hour. 

Did You Know:

• Damage caused by wind and hail cost State Farm and its policyholders more than $3.9 billion in 2012, according to an April 2013 analysis by the insurer.
• Texas was the state with the most wind/hail losses.
• Texas had the largest number of severe hail events in 2013.