A line of powerful thunderstorms packed with large hail left a trail of devastation and broken windows across Central Texas on Sunday night.
The worst of the damage appears to have struck the Austin-area city of Round Rock, judging by social media posts from Sunday night. Republican Texas House Rep. Caroline Harris shared video of the storm taken from beneath an overpass at I-35 and McNeil Road on Sunday. Rain and ice can be seen pelting down continuously, leaving the world outside the overpass almost completely obscured.
Harris shared multiple videos on X, formerly known as Twitter. In one, she estimated the size of the hail to be around that of a baseball.
In a follow-up, she recorded rows of damaged cars in the parking lot of the Kia of Round Rock dealership.
A spokesperson for Kia of Round Rock confirmed widespread damage to the cars on its properties on Monday.
"Almost every vehicle on the lot here was damaged," a Kia of Round Rock spokesperson told Chron. "We've got a lot of work to do here today."
Elsewhere, local Round Rock residents are dealing with extensive property damage to their homes and vehicles.
"It looks like a hurricane rolled through our street," said Katie Hall, 34, of Round Rock. Hall said her neighborhood west of I-35 incurred extensive property damage during Sunday's downpour. "Lots of tree debris. Several of our neighbors have broken home and car windows...it's really muddy. It's crazy how much grass and mud was churned up."
Hall took photos documenting the damage inflicted by the hail on her 2019 Toyota Corolla, which suffered shattered front and rear windows and interior damage during the storm.
She also took a photo of a large piece of hail that fell in the area, estimating the average size of the ice chunks that fell were "larger than a golf ball, smaller than a baseball."
"Thankfully we're safe. None of our house windows were broken," Hall said. "Honestly, we're feeling a lot luckier than a lot of our neighbors. I'm just glad we weren't out and about driving when all this hit."
Shortly before 5 p.m. CT Sunday the National Weather Service's Austin/San Antonio division began tweeting a stream of alerts warning Central Texas residents of thunderstorm activity forming over Hill Country and moving southeast toward Round Rock and Austin.
"We are closely watching portions of Hill Country for scattered storm development between now and 6 PM," NWS wrote. "Storms could quickly become strong to severe once they develop, with damaging winds and large hail being the main threats."
Subsequent warnings included a Severe Thunderstorm Watch forecasting "scattered hail up to tennis ball size likely" across Killeen and Waco east to Palestine, Texas. Hall said she'd seen warnings of thunderstorms earlier in the day, but that it wasn't immediately clear from the language just how much hail would factor into the system's potential threat.
"I was surprised," Hall said. "I really wish the weather alerts had said 'hail storm' instead of 'thunderstorm' expected this morning...I know that when you get a thunderstorm alert or warning there's often a chance of hail, but I've never experienced a hail storm or a thunderstorm of this magnitude."
