WINNETT — Residents in the Winnett area are picking up the pieces Monday, following a chaotic storm that brought tennis-ball sized hail to the area.
Residents told MTN that majority of the larger hail was found outside of town, while golf-ball sized hail hit downtown.
Watch this video to see the damage:
That larger hail hit hard at the Kiehl Ranch, about 20 minutes southwest of Winnett.
"It was so loud," said Haley Kiehl on Monday afternoon. "We saw one fall right out, and I thought a bird fell out of the sky, it was so big."
Kiehl said the storm interrupted her family's work around the property, as they quickly hid for cover in their shop. She said that the hail fell for the next 10-15 minutes and that it was hard to hear anything.
"That was hands down the biggest hail I've ever seen," Kiehl said.
Once the storm subsided, Kiehl and her family found the enormous hailstones scattered across their property. Even after waiting nearly two hours, many of the stones were still large enough that the family stored a bucket of them in their freezer.
The aftermath of the hailstorm left visible damage throughout the Kiehl Ranch, including shattered windows, destroyed playsets and cracked irrigation pipes in alfalfa fields.
"We put a lot of work into having a hay crop," Kiehl said of the damage to their irrigation system. "A lot of hours irrigating and a lot of time put into it, so that's hard to see that work go."
Nevertheless, Kiehl expressed relief that the overall damage was surprisingly minimal.
"The hail was so big that if it didn’t hit it directly, it wasn’t shredding leaves like the little stuff can," Kiehl said.
Others in the community, such as Cody Martinez, witnessed the smaller stones in town. Martinez showed MTN the hail damage on his truck Monday afternoon.
"It was pretty crazy," Martinez said. "It was quarter size, and suddenly it was golf ball, and then tennis ball. It got kind of western there."
Martinez is the owner of C&S Seamless Gutters. He said he expects his business to be busy these next couple weeks.
"I’m sure over the next month or two, we’ll get really busy with it," Martinez said.
Josh Schreiner, an employee at C&S Gutters, echoed Martinez's concerns regarding potential damage, adding that he's never seen hail that big before.
"Getting hail that big was pretty nerve-racking," Schreiner said. "You know, worried about the windows in the shop, the house, stuff like that."
While there are many repairs in the future for the Kiehl family, they remain grateful that their livestock and crops made it out with minimal damage.
“It sucks, but also kind of lucky in a sense,” Kiehl said.
