Florida town wakes up to piles of hail
Florida town wakes up to piles of hail
Hail as large as golf balls pelted a large swath of central Florida Wednesday morning as heavy storms battered the region.

Florida Today reported that windows were shattered, pool screens blown apart and cars damaged, while piles of ice up to two inches high covered the ground in some areas along the Space Coast in Brevard County.

"It's been a long time since Brevard has seen this," Matt Volkmer, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Melbourne, told the newspaper. "This system was a little stronger than expected."

Wind gusts up to 47 mph were recorded later in the day at Port Canaveral as the blustery weather continued, bringing with it rough seas and waves of 7 to 9 feet.





Residents in the small town of Trenton, about 30 miles west of Gainesville, woke up Wednesday morning to streets covered in so much hail it looked like snow. The Trenton Public Safety Department posted a warning on Facebook urging residents to use caution due to heavy ice on the roads.

Chris Dolce, weather.com meteorologist, said the scene was highly unusual in Florida.

"While hail that size is not damaging, it can pile up into an icy mess not typically seen in the state," Dolce said. "In fact, the images resemble something that is more the norm in the Plains states."

The golf-ball sized hail was reported in Brevard County, where two storms moved through back-to-back.

"That's unusually large for the Florida Peninsula," Dolce said. "In order for thunderstorms to generate larger hailstones, there must be a pocket of cold air in the upper atmosphere, and that is not typical of thunderstorm setups in Florida," he said. "This morning, however, there was unusually cold air aloft from an area of low pressure pivoting across the state, which allowed the growth of larger hailstones."

B​revard County Fire Rescue tweeted video of ice on Interstate 95, where traffic slowed to a crawl in some spots due to large ice amounts on the roadway.