Fort Smith Hail Climatology

Fort Smith, Arkansas
Hail Climatology (1972-1997)

The following table lists the occurrences of hail since 1972 at the Fort Smith Municipal Airport - the site of the official weather observation for the Fort Smith area. Although the occurrence of hail varies widely from place to place, this table is meant to illustrate the frequency of hail at any specific location in the area. Since hail, by nature, is a fairly isolated event, it often occurs in one area of the city while completely missing another area, and vice versa. But by using the past 25 years of data, this table is meant to represent an overall average for any single location in the area.

Fort Smith, AR - Hail Occurrences by Month and Year

  YEARS      Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec  Total
  1995-*      0   0   0   1   0   1   0   0   0   0   0   0      2
  1990-94     0   0   1   5   3   0   0   0   0   0   1   1     11
  1985-89     0   0   1   1   5   0   0   0   0   1   0   0      8 
  1980-84     0   1   2   2   3   1   0   0   0   0   1   0     10
  1975-79     0   1   5   0   3   1   0   0   0   0   1   0     11
  1972-74     0   1   1   2   0   2   1   0   0   0   1   0      8 
  ------------------------------------------------------------------
  -TOTALS     0   3  10  11  14   5   1   0   0   1   4   1     50
  -YEARLY
    AVERAGE   0  .1  .4  .4  .6  .2   0   0   0   0  .2   0    2.0
  -MONTHLY
    CHANCE   L5% 12% 40% 44% 56% 20% L5% L5% L5% L5% 16% L5% 


  L5% - Less than 5% chance
  *   - Data through December 1997.  Hail was recorded in the official 
        totals together with snow and sleet in years before 1956 and 
        again from 1989 to the present.  For the purpose of this table, 
        snow and sleet were filtered from the totals and only hail 
        events were used.

Using the data from the table, any specific location in the Fort Smith area can expect to receive hail an average of two times each year. The highest frequency of hail is during the transitional months in the spring. The peak time of year falls right in the middle of that transition period during March, April and May. Another small peak occurs in November as the weather pattern transitions back into winter.