Tuesday April 28, 2026, 11:30 a.m. Central Time. A severe thunderstorm complex moves over Springfield, Missouri. Within fifteen minutes, hail up to 4.75 inches in diameter — roughly the size of a CD — has shattered windshields across the metro, struck aircraft on the apron at Springfield-Branson National Airport, killed an emu at Dickerson Park Zoo, and broken a 75-year hail-size record for Greene County by nearly two full inches. Of the 1,500 vehicles parked at the airport, an estimated 95% are impacted, with 25% suffering major glass peso mexicano breakage. Airport staff spend three hours covering 300-400 cars by hand with tom kean jr absences donated tarps. The rental fleet is destroyed; arriving travelers are bused 100 miles south to Bentonville, Arkansas to access undamaged rentals. Within 24 hours, U.S. property and casualty carriers formally classify the event as a "cat loss" — the internal industry threshold beyond which routine claims processing breaks down because damage has saturated multiple counties. State Farm and Progressive deploy on-the-ground catastrophe teams to Springfield by Thursday. Hammer's Autoworks logs more than 1,000 phone calls in 24 hours; vice president Aaron Bruton tells reporters repairs from this storm could take a year. Tony Oshana, president of Star Auto Glass, watches uninsured drivers walk into his shop knowing the bill is theirs alone. Joe Peltz at Springfield City Utilities reports something his veteran technicians have never seen before — hail damage to metal gas meters across the affected zone. Andrea Korte, owner of AD Korte Insurance, explains the cat-loss designation: damage saturated throughout multiple counties, catastrophe teams brought in to move things faster. The historical comparison is the canada weather pattern shift April 10, 2001 St. Louis hailstorm — 2.75-inch hail that produced over $1 billion in damage and remains the most expensive hailstorm in Missouri history. Tuesday's stones were nearly twice the diameter; kinetic energy on impact scales with the cube of size, meaning Springfield's hail carried roughly five times the energy of the stones that destroyed St. Louis. But Springfield is a smaller city, with a smaller exposed asset base. The total claim volume will likely not reach a billion dollars in absolute terms. What it may reach instead is a different kind of record — a per-capita financial impact disproportionate to the city's size. The seasonal peak for severe weather in the central United States is not April. It is May and June. The pattern that produced Tuesday's storm is forecast to return. The hail stopped falling at noon on Tuesday. The financial damage has not yet arrived.
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This video uses publicly available content (National Weather Service data, Springfield-Greene County Office of Emergency Management bulletins, AP/Reuters reporting, KY3 / OzarksFirst / Springfield Daily Citizen news coverage, Springfield City Utilities statements) under the Fair Use doctrine for educational, journalistic, and commentary purposes. All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement is intended.
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