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The public record 1996 to today

Montana hail history

The public federal storm record holds 1,453 days with hail somewhere in Montana since 1996, 888 of them at 1.00″ or more, across 21,792 reports. The largest on record is 4.50″ on 26 June 1996 in MUSSELSHELL County. 19 cities have hail on record within 10 miles of their centre, and each has a page that says what was searched and which storm days more than one source carried. The wind family has its own index: Montana wind history.

1,453

Days with hail on record, statewide

888

Days at 1.00″ or more

4.50in

Largest on record, Jun 1996

19

Cities with hail on record nearby

Hail by city in Montana

Ranked by days with hail on record within 10 miles of each city's centre, then by population. Every place of five thousand people or more has a page; the busiest are listed here and the rest are a disclosure away.

  1. 01 Billings 119 days
  2. 02 Helena 118 days
  3. 03 Great Falls 99 days
  4. 04 Bozeman 88 days
  5. 05 Belgrade 84 days
  6. 06 Laurel 73 days
  7. 07 Miles City 55 days
  8. 08 Lewistown 53 days
  9. 09 Missoula 46 days
  10. 10 Havre 35 days
  11. 11 Livingston 35 days
  12. 12 Sidney 35 days
  13. 13 Kalispell 31 days
  14. 14 Anaconda-Deer Lodge County 30 days
  15. 15 Columbia Falls 29 days
  16. 16 Butte-Silver Bow 25 days
  17. 17 Whitefish 20 days
  18. 18 Hamilton 19 days
  19. 19 Polson 7 days

Hail days by year in Montana

Days with hail At 1.00″ or more

The busiest year on record is 2019, with 73 days of hail, 39 of them at 1.00″ or more.

Largest hail recorded in Montana

Measured Detected, not measured

Largest hail recorded in Montana: date, hail size, evidence and where the report was taken.
Date Size Evidence County
26 Jun 1996 4.50″ Ground observation MUSSELSHELL, MT
26 Jun 1996 4.50″ Ground observation FERGUS, MT
18 Jul 1999 4.50″ Ground observation MCCONE, MT
21 Jul 1999 4.50″ Ground observation VALLEY, MT
18 Jul 2001 4.50″ Ground observation POWDER RIVER, MT
18 Jul 2001 4.50″ Ground observation Not stated
20 Jul 2001 4.50″ Ground observation MCCONE, MT
20 Jul 2001 4.50″ Ground observation MCCONE, MT

Hail days by month in Montana

Hail here is a July matter: 421 of the days on record fall in that month, all years together.

The next step

Get the hail report for an address in Montana

The figures on this page are the record across Montana: enough to know there is something to cite, and from where. None of it says what reached one roof.

Run the address and the same archive is searched at the property: the storm, the date, the measured size, the distance and bearing from the roof, and the federal record each figure came from, in a document that states its own method. Ready in minutes.

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How this page is made

What counted
Every hail report in the archive filed under Montana by its source, with the cities ranked by the reports within 10 miles of each centre. A hail day is a calendar date with at least one report: four sources describing one storm are one afternoon of hail, not four.
Measured and detected
A report from a person or an instrument is measured. A radar-derived size is a detection and is marked as one, here and in every document we issue. The two are never added together.
Severe
A day counts as severe when its largest report reached 1.00″, the National Weather Service criterion. Smaller hail is still on the record, and still on this page.
What this is not
Neighbouring places share reports, so counts are not exclusive. This page is the record around a place; it is not a report on any property, and it states no opinion about one.
Terms used on this page
Storm day, independent source, measured and detected: each term this page uses is defined in the glossary as the report prints it.
The record
Searched from 1996 to today. Compiled 28 August 2026 and rebuilt daily as the archive deepens. Records are reproduced as the federal sources published them. The coverage page states what the record holds, by kind and by year.

About this record

Everything here is reproduced from public federal and volunteer weather records, as the agencies and observer networks that publish them released it. Titan Weather compiles the record; it does not observe the weather, and it is not affiliated with any source it cites.

No archive holds everything. Storms cross places where nobody is standing, instruments and observers cover some areas better than others, sources revise their records, and recent reports can take weeks to arrive and settle. Coverage also thins as the years go back: an early quiet stretch may describe who was watching rather than what the weather did. Where this page shows nothing, nothing was found in the sources searched, within the period and area it states. That is not a finding that no weather occurred.

A record sits where its source filed it. Reports made from the ground are commonly logged against a town, a landmark or an offset from one rather than the spot where the measurement was taken, so any distance shown for one carries that source's own location error. Radar detections and warning geometry are instrument-located and do not.

These pages describe the public record near a place or on a date. They do not establish what reached any particular property, and nothing here is insurance, legal or engineering advice.