Baseball-sized hailstones fall in Texas as southern US hit by severe storms

Baseball-sized pieces of hail fell in Texas as parts of the southern US battle thunderstorms and other severe weather.

Photos posted to social media showed the oversized hailstones – about 5in across – that fell in Johnson City in central Texas, NBC News reported.

Hail pieces about the size of a golfball were also spotted in the town of Granbury, Texas, about an hour outside Fort Worth.

Tennis ball-sized hailstones also fell in Pecan Plantation, an unincorporated community in central Texas, NBC Dallas-Fort Worth reported.

Lydia Torres, a medic in Pecan Plantation, told NBC Dallas-Fort Worth that the hailstones “sounded like bombs were hitting the top of the ambulance”.

“Especially when it hit the top of the windshield, you could see the glass start to shatter everywhere,” she said.

The cities of San Marcos and Johnson City reported extensive damage from the supersized hail and high wind gusts, KXAN News reported.

A spokesperson for San Marcos said that the city had received reports of downed power lines and uprooted trees due to Thursday’s storm.

Several areas of Texas were also under a tornado warning late on Thursday, the National Weather Service reported.

As of Friday morning, more than 300,000 residents mostly in southern states were without power, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks outages nationwide.

The majority of outages are in Florida, where 197,405 people are experiencing power outages. Northern parts of the state have seen severe thunderstorms that could turn into tornadoes, the Tallahassee Democrat reported.

“Damaging to destructive winds, isolated tornadoes, and large hail will be the main threats,” the National Weather Service in Tallahassee reported. “Heavy rainfall could also become a concern if redevelopment and training of storms occurs behind this complex of storms this afternoon.”

Tallahassee residents have also reported extensive damage in the area, NWS Tallahassee reported on X.