The skies over Norman, Oklahoma, on Sunday looked like the aftermath of a nuclear bomb, thanks to clouds brought by a strong storm.
Video footage of the incident shows a cumulus appearing to move upward through a stratus cloud, giving the illusion of a mushroom, at sunset. Another clip, posted by the Fowler Family Farm in Paoli, to the south of Norman, shows the formation stretching across the rural horizon while the wind can be heard picking up.
Forecasters WeatherNation said that the unusual cloud pattern was the same cell that had brought sizeable hailstorms to Seminole County in central Oklahoma on Saturday night.
The National Weather Service (NWS) station in the region previously issued a series of severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings for central Oklahoma through the weekend, warning of table-tennis- to baseball-sized hail.
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In a forecast discussion, it said hailstones in excess of two inches had fallen in places on Saturday night, and qualified that though the potential for tornadoes had been low, “there are a few parameters that point to the possibility of an isolated tornado.”
By Sunday afternoon, the NWS station in Norman said the “prime location” for severe storm development had shifted to the far south of Oklahoma, near Texas.
As the storm shifted over Texas, images and video from across the state showed massive hailstones causing damage to property. On the same day, Dallas and Fort Worth experienced their warmest September 24 since 1907.
State Representative Caroline Harris posted several videos of hail pelting the ground and smashing the windows of parked cars from the safety of beneath an overpass on the IH35.
Driving past a Kia dealership in Round Rock, to the north of Austin, she showed a number of windscreens cracked or entirely caved in. “Just crazy,” she commented.
“Incredible amount of hail damage in Round Rock,” Gabe Cox, a storm chaser, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, accompanied by several images of destroyed car windows. “Didn’t see a single parked car that didn’t have a cracked windshield or blown out rear window.”
Round Rock Police Department said that there had been “significant” property damage in the area with isolated power cuts. Newsweek approached the department via email for further comment on Monday.
The storm also delayed the kick-off of an Austin FC soccer game, after a lightning strike hit within the team stadium’s safety perimeter. The game later commenced at 11:30 p.m. CT (12:30 a.m. ET).
“Getting horrific hail in East Austin. At least golf ball sized. It’s extremely loud with fast winds,” Parker Sewell, a locally-based consultant, wrote alongside a video of hailstones bouncing off his patio.
The NWS in Norman said it expects a pattern of warm weather to return to the region this week, but cautioned that more rain could arrive by the weekend.
It said that large hail stones were common to storms in the region. In June, hailstorms and tornadoes hit Tulsa, while in April a supercell tornado-producing storm left at least two people dead in the state.