July 9, 2006: Hail in Columbia, Dane and Waukesha Counties

A complicated weather scenario developed during the late afternoon and early evening of July 9th. A cold front pushing east into southwestern Wisconsin produced slow moving scattered thunderstorms across south-central Wisconsin as a lake breeze pushed west into the counties of Washington, eastern Waukesha and Racine. This resulted in more slow moving thunderstorms. Some of the storms across south-central Wisconsin pulsed to severe levels producing up to half-dollar sized hail (1.25" in diameter) and wind gusts to 52 knots (60 mph). The storms over southeast Wisconsin were just as strong. however, those storms aligned themselves along the northwest to southeast oriented lake breeze as they tracked very slowly southeast. Additional storms continuously developed on the northwest edge of the line. This resulted in a prolonged period of training storms and torrential rain. Around 5 inches of rain was estimated by WSR-88D Doppler radar across northeast Waukesha County and central Milwaukee County. Flash flooding resulted near the cities of Brookfield (Waukesha Co.), downtown Milwaukee (Milwaukee Co.), West Allis (Milwaukee Co.), and Kenosha (Kenosha Co.) - mainly in the form of several feet of water over roadways and soil erosion.Two days earlier, on July 7th, in Milwaukee, a female, age 32, died from high temperatures in her residence. The maximum and minimum temperatures for Milwaukee on July 7th were 81 and 61, respectively. Afternoon heat index values on July 7th were in the lower to mid 80s. These values are well below threshold values of 105 needed to generate a StormData event. Therefore, this heat-related death will be considered indirectly-related to heat.