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© Bob Zellar/Gazette StaffFans huddle under an umbrella during the rain at the Scarlets-Royals game at Dehler Park on Friday. A brief thunderstorm moved through the city Friday evening.
Heavy rain and thunder cleared the way for a short burst of hail in parts of south-central Montana on Friday night, although no significant damage was reported.

The National Weather Service's Billings office issued an advisory for Stillwater and Yellowstone counties before 9 p.m. warning of strong rains, hail, lightning, thunder and wind gusts of up to 50 mph.

A short, heavy downpour started in Billings just after 9 p.m., although little hail was reported east of the West End, said Vickie Stephenson, an NWS hydrometeorologic technician.

It dropped a 0.26 inches of rain on Billings in less than an hour before moving out of the area before 10 p.m., according to the weather service.

Trained weather spotters reported hail 0.88 and 0.75 inches in diameter about four miles northwest of Laurel and three miles southwest of Billings, respectively.

Hail the size of large marbles was reported in the Columbus area earlier in the evening. The Stillwater County Sheriff's Office said the hail fell for less than 10 minutes and that no major damage was reported.

"It weakened after it left Columbus," Stephenson said. "When it got it to Billings, it didn't get any bigger than nickel- or dime-sized, mostly in Laurel and the West End."

A pair of small power outages also happened during the storm. Michelle Sullivan, NorthWestern Energy spokeswoman, said it's possible they were related to the storm, but she didn't know for sure.

The first outage happened in the area of St. John's and Cook avenues on the West End. Crews were on scene as of 10:15 p.m. trying to fix the problem.

The second outage happened in the area of Silverwood Street off of Rimrock Road, just west of 17th St. W. Sullivan said that outage happened because of a bad underground line, although the exact problem was unknown.

The storm continued to move east after passing through Billings.

Overnight, the NWS predicted scattered thunderstorms, which will continue into Saturday.

"There's a 20 percent chance of thunderstorms and showers Saturday," Stephenson said. "But there's a high of about 73, which is perfect."