People began noticing the hail noise.
Ice hitting metal.
Ice on glass.
Ice on farm buildings, machine sheds, and grain bins.
Then the hailstones started getting larger.
When the storm moved into parts of Eastern Iowa, some of these hailstones were able to be held in your hand.
The hail had nowhere to go.
The windows did not stand much chance either.
Why hail can grow larger than a softball
A hailstone starts as a tiny drop.
It forms high up in a thunderstorm, then rises with warm air currents (updrafts).
If the updraft is strong enough, the ice does not fall right away.
Instead, it continues to rise higher.
More and more water freezes onto its surface. Again. And again.
As the hailstone moves through favorable parts of the storm, additional layers of ice can accumulate.
Eventually the weight of this ice causes it to lose buoyancy in the updraft and fall.
An ice ball measuring four and one-half inches in diameter takes an unusually powerful storm.
Stronger updrafts help support larger hailstones inside the storm.
Once the hailstone becomes too heavy for the updraft to support, it falls toward the ground.
Surface winds can alter the hailstone’s path and increase the risk of damage.
That is when most of the damage occurs.
Across eastern Iowa in a single evening
The first reports of the storm developed late in the afternoon of August 7th, 2026.
Several severe thunderstorms formed over Eastern Iowa between 4 pm and 10 pm.
One of the worst reports came from Ryan.
At 5:14 p.m., emergency managers reported that hail ranging from golf ball size to softball-sized hail (4-1/2″) fell there along with strong winds.
A gust of about seventy miles per hour was recorded just prior to the largest hail report at Ryan.
Trees went down; the top third of a grain bin located at the Ryan Co-op building collapsed; other damage occurred outside Ryan as well.
Near Prairieburg, the situation rapidly deteriorated after about ten minutes as wind-driven hail rained down across the countryside.
Windows broke. House siding cracked. Machine sheds were damaged.
A liquid storage tank was knocked over, and several large trees snapped.
Cornfields also took massive hits.
Power lines came down as the storm moved through the area.
Other areas, including portions of Buchanan, Linn, Delaware, and Benton counties experienced similar events.
This event was not isolated.
The storm stretched across multiple counties.
The National Weather Service reported that the storm combined very large hail, destructive winds and tornado-producing conditions across several eastern Iowa counties.
Why the hail was not the whole story
Wind can increase the damage caused by hail, but large hailstones are capable of causing damage on their own.
However, if that same hailstone is traveling horizontally, it will react very differently to that impact.
For example, glass that might survive a direct impact can shatter when wind changes the angle and speed of the strike.
A small number of impacts may cause temporary crop damage.
Repeated impacts and severe winds, however, often leave permanent losses behind.
Hail, wind, and trees falling all occurred simultaneously during this event.
Tornadoes were confirmed to have occurred near both Fairbank and Prairieburg.
That complicates the damage picture.
The various types of damage typically cannot be attributed to a singular form.
The destruction rarely belongs to a single cause.
The larger lesson from a few hours of weather
Broken siding is replaced. Power lines are rebuilt. Crops do not recover once a season is lost.
Only minutes separated the largest hailstone in Ryan being reported at 5:14 p.m.; damage assessments were conducted throughout the night near Prairieburg.
The timeline fits inside minutes. The damage often did.
The atmosphere that created them is the larger story. The hail was only one part of it.
Severe thunderstorms over the Plains and Midwest produce more than one hazard; therefore, they are difficult to compare with average summer storms.
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