How Often Does It Hail in Florida?
Florida recorded 4,627 hail reports between 1996 and 2025. Just under half of them, 2,220 reports, reached one inch or more, the size at which the National Weather Service calls a storm severe. Hail of 1.25 inches or larger was logged 837 times, roughly 28 reports a year across the whole state.
Our analysis of the NOAA Storm Events Database. The filtered dataset is available at the bottom of this page.
How often does it hail in Florida, year by year
Florida is not a hail state. Ranked by total recorded hail events since records began, it sits 27th out of 50. The corridor where Nebraska, Colorado and Wyoming meet gets more hail days in a single town than Florida gets across 65,000 square miles.
Rare is not the same as never. Those 837 large-hail reports work out to about 28 a year, but reports and days are counted differently: one hail day produces several reports from different towns, so 28 reports land on roughly 13 days per year. Since 2013 the average has been lower, around nine days annually. We explain why further down.
What counts as damaging. The National Weather Service issues a severe thunderstorm warning once hail reaches one inch, the width of a quarter. That is the point where horizontal panels start taking dents. Throughout this study we treat 1.25 inches as the threshold for large hail, because at that size damage is close to unavoidable and rarely limited to a single panel.
Florida hail season: March through July
March through July accounts for 3,917 of the 4,627 reports, or 85 percent. May and June sit almost level at the top: 1,114 reports against 1,070.
From September to February hail is close to absent. December produced five reports in thirty years.
Large stones need a violent updraft rather than cold air at ground level. In spring the upper atmosphere is still cold while the surface is already heating like summer, which builds the strongest storms of the year. By August the upper layers warm up and hailstones melt on the way down.
What time of day hail falls
Of the 2,220 reports of hail at one inch or larger, 1,324 fall between 2 and 6 p.m. That is 60 percent of them inside a four-hour window. Stretch it from noon to 8 p.m. and you capture 85 percent. Overnight hail barely exists in Florida: midnight to 6 a.m. produced 61 reports in three decades.
Which leads somewhere awkward. Hail arrives during the hours a car is least likely to be home. A garage stops hail completely, but between 2 and 6 p.m. the car is sitting in an open lot at the office, the mall or the airport.
The drivers who get hit are not the ones without a garage. They are the ones at work.
Which Florida counties get the largest hail
Large hail concentrates in the middle of the state. Brevard, Polk, Seminole and Orange take the top four places, covering the I-4 corridor between Orlando and Tampa plus the coast east of it. A second cluster sits around Jacksonville.
| County | Reports of 1.25″+ | Largest stone recorded |
|---|---|---|
| Brevard | 46 | 2.50″ |
| Polk | 45 | 4.50″ |
| Seminole | 39 | 3.00″ |
| Orange | 38 | 2.75″ |
| Duval | 31 | 2.75″ |
| Volusia | 31 | 2.00″ |
| Miami-Dade | 29 | 3.00″ |
| Hillsborough | 25 | 3.00″ |
| Palm Beach | 25 | 2.00″ |
| Alachua | 24 | 2.75″ |
| St. Johns | 23 | 3.00″ |
| St. Lucie | 22 | 2.75″ |
| Lake | 20 | 2.75″ |
| Leon | 20 | 2.00″ |
| Martin | 19 | 2.00″ |
| Osceola | 19 | 2.00″ |
| Broward | 19 | 1.75″ |
| Marion | 18 | 4.50″ |
| Escambia | 17 | 2.00″ |
| Putnam | 15 | 2.00″ |
| Suwannee | 14 | 2.75″ |
| Bay | 14 | 2.00″ |
| Lee | 14 | 1.75″ |
| Santa Rosa | 12 | 2.75″ |
| Nassau | 11 | 2.75″ |
| Clay | 11 | 2.00″ |
Does South Florida get large hail?
It does, and that is worth stating plainly, because the opposite claim gets repeated a lot. Miami-Dade sits seventh in the table with 29 reports of hail at 1.25 inches or larger, close to one a year.
On 15 June 2012 three-inch hail fell over Coconut Grove and Coral Gables. The National Weather Service log states that photographs sent to the office confirmed stones up to three inches across. Coral Way Village recorded two inches the same afternoon. That is the same ceiling as Seminole and Hillsborough.
The gap between south and center is not the ceiling but how regularly the state reaches it. Neighboring Broward has logged 183 hail reports in thirty years and not one exceeded 1.75 inches.
Hail and the cars in its path
Florida has 17,209,342 registered cars and pickups, according to state highway safety figures for April 2025. Five counties each hold more than a million of them and together account for 40 percent of the fleet: Miami-Dade, Broward, Orange, Palm Beach and Hillsborough.
Among those five, Orange logs the most large hail with 38 reports over thirty years. Miami-Dade follows with 29, Hillsborough and Palm Beach with 25 each, Broward with 19.
The state leaders for hail are not in that group at all. Brevard has 46 reports and Polk 45, but each registers roughly half as many vehicles as Orange.
A registration records the owner’s address, not where the vehicle spends its afternoons. These figures show fleet size by county, nothing about where any car was parked when a storm passed over.
How big does Florida hail get
The most common size on record is 0.75 inches, about a penny, with 1,611 reports. One inch, the width of a quarter, comes second at 1,383.
Stones of 4.5 inches, the size of a grapefruit, have fallen three times in thirty years: Polk County in 1996, Bradford in 2003 and Marion in 2007. That is the state record.
Why an average stone size would be meaningless. Sizes in the database cluster around reference objects, because a spotter compares the stone to a coin, a golf ball or a tennis ball. Hence 477 reports at exactly 1.75 inches against only 103 at 1.50. The honest way to read this data is by threshold, not by average.
What hail does to a car
One-inch stones leave shallow dents across the hood, roof and trunk lid. Vertical panels get away lighter. At two inches glass starts breaking and panels deform badly enough that straightening alone stops being the answer.
Light hail damage runs to a few hundred dollars, which lands close to a typical deductible. Moderate damage of 15 to 50 dents costs $1,000 to $2,500. Severe multi-panel damage runs from $2,500 past $10,000.
One point drivers get wrong: paintless repair by itself creates no Carfax entry. The insurance claim does.
More on this: how hail dents are repaired, when a claim is worth filing and what dent repair costs in Florida.
Send photos, get repair estimates
Method and limits of this data
The source is the NOAA Storm Events Database, filtered to event type Hail in Florida for 1996 through 2025. That leaves 4,627 records. Stone size and coordinates are present on every record and no event ID repeats.
Reporting bias. The database holds reports of hail, not hail itself. A stone that lands in a town gets reported. The same stone over the Everglades usually does not. Clusters on the map trace where people live as much as where storms go.
Stepped sizes. Covered above: spotters compare stones to objects, so the size distribution comes in steps rather than a smooth curve.
The break after 2012. Before 2012 the state logged around 200 reports a year. After, around 90. Large hail dropped far less, and 2023 produced 50 reports at 1.25 inches or above, matching 1990s levels. Reporting practice for small hail looks like the likely explanation rather than climate. We cannot state that as established fact.
What the records miss. They start in 1996. Florida’s costliest hailstorm, March 1992, with damage estimated between $60 million and $100 million, falls outside them entirely.
Download the data. Florida hail reports 1996–2025, CSV, 4,627 rows. NOAA data is public domain. If you use these figures, please credit NOAA as the original source and link back to dentlid.com. Vehicle registration figures: Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, April 2025.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does it hail in South Florida?
Yes. Miami-Dade logged 29 reports of hail at 1.25 inches or larger over thirty years, and on 15 June 2012 stones of three inches fell over Coral Gables. Neighboring Broward logged 19 reports and none exceeded 1.75 inches.
Which month has the most hail in Florida?
May and June, almost level with each other. Together they account for 2,184 of the 4,627 reports on record, splitting 1,114 to 1,070.
What is the largest hailstone recorded in Florida?
Four and a half inches, the size of a grapefruit. It has happened three times in thirty years: Polk County in 1996, Bradford County in 2003 and Marion County in 2007.
What size hail damages a car?
Around one inch, the width of a quarter, which is also the threshold for a severe thunderstorm warning. Hail of 1.25 inches or more will normally dent several panels at once.
What time of day does hail fall in Florida?
Daytime. Of reports at one inch or larger, 60 percent land between 2 and 6 p.m., and 85 percent between noon and 8 p.m.