It has been quite a while since Stockton has experienced a spring storm the magnitude of the one which struck the community last Sunday afternoon. After a beautiful day on Saturday, Mother Nature blessed us that evening with nearly .75 an inch of welcomed rain. On Sunday we woke up to what appeared to be another nice day, but shortly after noon the clouds made their presence, and by early afternoon we were receiving alerts for light rain. Those alerts were soon upgraded to a severe thunderstorm warning…and unfortunately, that warning was spot-on.

The heavy rains that began drenching the area just before 3:15 p.m. soon included sheets of hailstones averaging somewhere between marble- and nickel-sized, with some even reporting having hail the size of a golf ball. With the wind, heavy rain and unrelenting hail pummeling the area for nearly an hour, several homes suffered broken windows, damaged siding and roofs, ruined flowers and gardens, trees were stripped of some of their leaves, vehicles had windows broken out, and several basements were flooded.

Flooding also occurred on a few streets around town with some of them impassable for a time, as were roads at the Lower City Park. At one time late in the evening the Park was completely under water, but the levels had subsided by morning. In rural areas there were also several roads which were flooded, and no doubt damage was done to crops in the area.

Throughout the community, rain gauges which were still intact showed anywhere from 3.5-4.5 inches of rain, while the Weather Channel app recorded 5.15 inches. And that was before the second round rolled in around 11:00 p.m., dropping an additional 1.5 inches of rain, with a lot of lightning and thunder.

The high winds also caused some problems with several branches being broken off trees. Just east of town, a shed located east of Central Veterinary Services’ main office was picked up and blown toward their building, but thankfully an alfalfa bale stopped it. A lightning strike in the north part of town caused a few homes in the 400 block to be without power for a while, but fortunately no fire resulted from it.

These incidents are just a snapshot of the damage that occurred around the community and in rural areas. Needless to say, the cleaning up from this memorable storm isn’t going to happen overnight… and the scary thing is, more storms are predicted this week.