When is hail season in Kansas?

The short answer you usually hear is one word: spring. The federal storm record for the counties around Spring Hill, Olathe, Kansas City, Kansas and Topeka gives a sharper answer. The peak is late spring, but hail of 1 inch or larger, the size the weather service calls severe, has been reported here in every month from February to December.

We did not take that from another website. We downloaded the Storm Prediction Center's hail database and counted it ourselves. How we counted is further down this page, so you can check it.

Hail reports of 1.00 inch or larger, Johnson, Miami, Wyandotte and Shawnee counties, Kansas, 2005 to 2024. Source: NOAA Storm Prediction Center severe weather database, counted by Cranio Hail.

Month	Reports	Share	Bar
January	0	0.0%
February	11	1.8%
March	73	12.1%
April	128	21.2%
May	160	26.4%
June	111	18.3%
July	38	6.3%
August	39	6.4%
September	34	5.6%
October	7	1.2%
November	3	0.5%
December	1	0.2%
All year	605	100%

May is the busiest month and the most reliable one. It holds 160 of the 605 reports, and in 19 of the 20 years at least one report of 1 inch or larger came in May. April and June follow. Together, April, May and June hold 399 reports, about two out of every three.

It tapers off rather than stopping. July, August and September together hold 111 reports, about 18% of the year, and September alone had reports in 10 of the 20 years.

After that the record goes quiet: October through February add up to 22 reports in twenty years. Quiet is not empty. The record includes 1 inch hail in Johnson, Miami and Shawnee counties on October 1, 2014, and in Johnson County on December 15, 2021.

This year is not in the twenty year count, but it followed the same shape: a spring peak with a long tail. These dates and sizes come from the NOAA Storm Prediction Center reports listed on our city pages:

• March 10: 1.00 inch at Edgerton.
• April 15: hail to 4.00 inches reported at Paola, in Miami County.
• April 27: 1.75 inches 4 miles northwest of Topeka, and 1.75 inches southwest of Shawnee and southwest of Olathe.
• August 18 to 19: reports around Kansas City, Kansas reached 1.75 inches.
• September 15: 2.00 inches at Edgerton.
• October 13: 1.75 inches 7 miles south-southeast of Silver Lake.

Every report for Topeka and Silver Lake, with the time it was filed, is on the Topeka page. The others are on where we work and the city pages it links to.

• From April through June, park under cover when you can. Those three months hold two thirds of the record.
• After a storm, look at the car under a low, raking light. Hail damage shows up there and almost disappears under an overcast sky, which is why a quick look in daylight misses so much of it.
• Find your storm. The Storm Prediction Center publishes its reports by date at spc.noaa.gov/climo/reports.
• Read your own policy for its time limits. You file the claim, and your insurer decides coverage.
• Have the car seen in person. Our page on hail damage repair explains why photographs miss hail damage, and what to do after hail damages your car puts the steps in order.