'Biggest hailstones I’ve ever seen': Intense storm rips through Windsor-Essex

A storm that brought severe wind and hail the size of baseballs ripped through Windsor-Essex Thursday, leaving behind some minor damage and quite the cleanup Friday afternoon.

Josh Chaulk was at work Thursday in Cottam when the storm hit.

“I go into the window and start looking and the stones just keep getting bigger and bigger,” he said.

From the safety of indoors, Chaulk took a video of baseball-sized hail crashing down in Cottam.

“They're just bouncing off the grass and we couldn't believe the size,” Chaulk said. “I've never seen anything like this. Like it's the biggest hailstones I've ever seen.”

Hail was reported in both Amherstburg and Cottam.

While Chaulk was fine, his car didn’t fare quite as well, the hail leaving some massive dents in his hood and roof.

“It's just some battle scars going on right now. It's like, I don't feel like paying $1,000 to have someone fix a dozen dents on my car,” he said.Large hail after a storm in Essex, Ont., on July 20, 2023. (Rich Garton/CTV News Windsor)

A line of thunderstorms moved through the region around 3:30 Thursday. According to Gerald Cheng of Environment Canada, the storm brought mostly downbursts, with wind that reached a peak of 96 km/h in Windsor.

He noted hail of this size can be very dangerous if you’re caught out in the open.

“Pea-sized hail, you know, that's nothing, maybe a few leaves down. But baseball size hitting our heads? We could see head trauma,” Cheng said.

Hail develops when raindrops get carried upwards by an updraft to an altitude above freezing level. Very big hail happens when those frozen droplets start gathering together, said Cheng.

“They start to freeze on the existing hailstones and then they grow and grow and grow,” said Cheng. “At some point it becomes so heavy that they have to fall because the updraft isn't strong enough or the updraft has to weaken.”

In Windsor, the 311 hotline took 219 storm-related calls — some for isolated flooding but most calls were for downed trees and limbs.

Abdul Malik was taking a video when a tree limb fell on a nearby power line.

“It sounded like an explosion. Everyone jumped back. Even the firefighter guys jumped back. I thought more wires would fall but thank god nothing did,” recalled Malik.

Malik said he smelled smoke when he pulled into his mom’s driveway in Windsor.

“And then everyone saw the smoke,” he said. “We called the fire department and they were on scene pretty quick.”

Power outages were reported across the city and county long after the skies had cleared.

Brenda Nelson was cooking when the storm hit.

“Went in, flipped my pork chops and heard the big thud. I came out and this is what I witnessed,” noting a pile of limbs strewn across her street on Grove Avenue.

In some spots, entire trees uprooted by the strong winds fell onto houses.

At Kirk Donnelly’s house, the brick chimney was knocked clear off the roof.

“It took out the chimney and there’s small damage to the eavestrough and the shingles got a bit of damage,” Donnelly said. “What a mess. We got to clean it up. It was on the sidewalk.“