Hailstones the size of baseballs landed in Texas on Thursday, as a spate of storms and severe weather left more than 200,000 energy customers across five states in the South without power as cleanup operations begin.
Footage verified by NBC News from Johnson City, Texas, shows enormous hailstones at least 5 inches in diameter — large enough to break an SUV’s rear window. One hailstone was an estimated 6.25 inches across, which would make it the second largest ever found in Texas. There only been four verified hailstones over 6 inches since 1950.
Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes brought havoc to the Midwest and then through the Southeast this week, where at least three people died as a result of weather events.
Almost 95,000 energy customers in Alabama were without power as of 7 a.m. ET, according to PowerOutage.us, as well as 57,000 in Mississippi and 50,000 in Florida. Georgia and North Carolina each had about 17,000 power outages.
The bad weather is over for most but some 7 million people are at risk of severe weather Friday morning, with an “enhanced risk” of intense storms and winds of up to 70 mph for parts of Florida, the National Weather Service office in Jacksonville said.
NBC News Dallas-Fort Worth spoke to families in Pecan Plantation, southwest of Fort Worth, whose houses were battered by hail the size of golf balls.
Medic Lydia Torres told the station that the sound of hail landing on her ambulance was like a bomb.
“It sounded like bombs were hitting the top of the ambulance. Especially when it hit the top of the windshield, you could see the glass start to shatter everywhere,” she said.
She said she and her partner were on a call when hail forced them to scramble for shelter. “It looks like a paintball hit him in the back of his shoulder blades,” she said.
Windows and skylights were smashed across the community, although some children were keen to collect the hailstones as frozen souvenirs.
Meanwhile in Maury County, Tennessee, which experienced widespread destruction from tornadoes this week, Columbia Fire & Rescue released drone footage showing the extent of the damage and the scale of the cleanup operation to come.
Entire houses have been laid to waste, while large sections of wooded areas are now without trees.
County officials offered affected residents advice on how to separate and dispose off the debris.
As for next week, flash flooding is a big concern along the Gulf Coast, including New Orleans, where between 5 and 7 inches of rain is expected.
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