A cold front dropped light rain early Thursday morning over the Turlock area. The rain ended and the low OVC began breaking up by mid-morning. Cumulus towers began popping up all over the place by the early afternoon hours. Temperatures were in the low to mid 60s, dewpoints in the low 50s, winds were light and southeasterly, and there was no mid or high level cloud deck to cap convection. This was something I had to keep an eye on...
At around 1500 PST, my mom left a message on my answering machine - saying that there was a tornado warning in the north Modesto area. I immediately flipped on to TWC to see what was going on. Sure enough, the warning was being scrolled along the bottom of the screen. The warned area was for an area some 20-25 mi to my northwest and north, and the warned storm was heading ESE - apparently towards the Sierra Nevada foothills and away from my area. That was before the storm showed signs of becoming a "right mover".....
Over the next hour, the storm's motion became more and more southerly - on a crash course with Turlock. Although it was still sunny outisde, I began to hear thunder from this storm just before 1600. The storm hit at 1624 - and that's when all heck broke loose.... The sky turned dark, heavy rain began falling, and the lightning increased in frequency. At 1630, it began to hail. The hail was nothing too serious at first - just 1/4 inch in diameter, or pea size. Still, it was hail - and as a spotter for the NWS, it's something I'm required to report. So at 1640, I contacted the Sacramento NWS office (STO). Boy was I in for a surprise when I called....
No sooner that I identified myself was I asked how large of hail size I was receiving. It turned out that STO was issuing a severe thunderstorm warning for the Turlock area just as I called. Anyway, the NWS employee told me that the KDAX nexrad indicated possible 3/4 inch hail over Turlock, and that I could see hail that large. As soon as the call was completed, I saw the warning scroll across the bottom of the screen on The Weather Channel.
Minutes later, we did begin to get some larger hail. Most of the hailstones were 3/8 to 1/2 inch in diameter - but when I crouched down to get a look at some of the hailstones, I found one about the size of a penny. There was my 3/4 inch hailstone to verify the warning! But as soon as it began, it was all over. The storm had moved southeast of the area by 1700, still producing frequent CC and CG lightning. It stopped producing lightning by 1730, although the Cb held together for at least another hour.
The stats for this storm were impressive. In addition to the 3/4 inch hail, I also received .61 of an inch of rain between 1624 and 1644. Temperature dropped from 62F to 54F from 1600 to 1700, and the pressure rose from 29.74 in to 29.82 in during that same hour. This storm was the first to reach severe levels in Turlock since Mar 20, 1991 - when we had 1 1/4 inch (almost golf ball size) hail.