Hail and Howling Winds Rip Through Phoenix

Hail bounced off a flooded parking lot and violent winds bent a tree almost sideways as a severe thunderstorm tore through north Phoenix on Wednesday, October 21.

X user Steve S filmed the storm near Interstate 17 and Dunlap Avenue, writing that it “ripped through here with hail.” The footage shows rain driven almost horizontally across the lot as hailstones bounce off the pavement and splash into puddles. A tree beside a parked pickup thrashes in the gusts, and a flash of lightning lights up the dark sky. “It’s like golf…” one person can be heard saying, before another adds, “Oh I know, I just got out there.”

The clip was posted shortly before 4 p.m. local time, minutes after the National Weather Service in Phoenix warned of a “dangerous” severe thunderstorm moving through the West Valley, with radar indicating large, damaging hail of 2 to 3 inches.

The storm was part of a powerful system that put the whole Phoenix metro area under a flood watch through Thursday, while northern Arizona was placed under the state’s first tornado watch since 2010. A night earlier, storms uprooted trees and damaged homes in Mesa.