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Overview

On the evening of July 11th, strong storms developed along a front and tracked across parts of eastern South Dakota. The strongest storms produced large hail and damaging winds. The hardest hit area was around Watertown, SD where hail the size of baseballs fell. There was also a 75 mph wind gust recorded at the Watertown Regional Airport, as well as locally torrential rainfall.

Image
Left: Severe Thunderstorm Reports from http://www.spc.noaa.gov/climo/gmf.php?rpt=170711_rpts_filtered

Right: Cloud-to-ground lightning strikes. Data courtesy of Vaisala - U.S. National Lightning Detection Network

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