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The public record 1996 to today

North Carolina hail history

The public federal storm record holds 1,428 days with hail somewhere in North Carolina since 1996, 958 of them at 1.00″ or more, across 22,966 reports. The largest on record is 4.50″ on 7 May 1998 in ROWAN County. 145 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: North Carolina wind history.

1,428

Days with hail on record, statewide

958

Days at 1.00″ or more

4.50in

Largest on record, May 1998

145

Cities with hail on record nearby

Hail by city in North Carolina

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 Long View 129 days
  2. 02 Hickory 123 days
  3. 03 Sawmills 122 days
  4. 04 Morganton 119 days
  5. 05 Raleigh 113 days
  6. 06 Newton 112 days
  7. 07 Fletcher 112 days
  8. 08 Conover 111 days
  9. 09 Morrisville 106 days
  10. 10 Cary 105 days
  11. 11 Hendersonville 104 days
  12. 12 Dallas 103 days
  13. 13 Bessemer City 102 days
  14. 14 Asheville 101 days
  15. 15 Gastonia 97 days
  16. 16 Garner 97 days
  17. 17 Mills River 97 days
  18. 18 Lenoir 96 days
  19. 19 Cramerton 96 days
  20. 20 Charlotte 94 days
  21. 21 Pineville 92 days
  22. 22 Knightdale 90 days
  23. 23 Belmont 89 days
  24. 24 Marvin 89 days
  25. 25 Matthews 87 days
  26. 26 Marion 87 days
  27. 27 Mint Hill 85 days
  28. 28 Stallings 84 days
  29. 29 Cherryville 84 days
  30. 30 Apex 83 days
Every place in North Carolina (145)

Hail days by year in North Carolina

Days with hail At 1.00″ or more

The busiest year on record is 2012, with 84 days of hail, 56 of them at 1.00″ or more.

Largest hail recorded in North Carolina

Measured Detected, not measured

Largest hail recorded in North Carolina: date, hail size, evidence and where the report was taken.
Date Size Evidence County
07 May 1998 4.50″ Ground observation ROWAN, NC
27 May 1998 4.50″ Ground observation MONTGOMERY, NC
03 Jun 1998 4.50″ Ground observation CATAWBA, NC
24 May 2000 4.50″ Ground observation Not stated
24 May 2000 4.50″ Ground observation Not stated
24 May 2000 4.50″ Ground observation BURKE, NC
24 May 2000 4.50″ Ground observation BURKE, NC
20 Apr 2024 4.50″ Ground observation Robeson, NC

Hail days by month in North Carolina

Hail here is a June matter: 296 of the days on record fall in that month, all years together.

The next step

Get the hail report for an address in North Carolina

The figures on this page are the record across North Carolina: 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 North Carolina 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 2 November 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.