Like the where-were-you aspect of two infamous episodes in U.S. history, the savage hailstorm that hit a small piece of the county slightly more than two years ago has become an unforgettable moment in the lives of those who experienced it.
"It just seemed like the whole world was coming apart," said the Rev. Mark Johnson, pastor of Bausman Memorial United Church of Christ in Wyomissing. "When I came out, my Honda Civic was dimpled up like a golf ball."
The memorable storm hit on a Thursday afternoon. Hail reported as the size of golf balls or larger fell from 2:45 to 3:30 p.m., followed by a second hailstorm within an hour.
Wyomissing, West Reading, Reading, Kenhorst and Spring Township suffered the most. Cars, windows, roofs, aluminum siding and lawn furniture got hammered.
The hail was so deep PennDOT sent out plows, and more than half of Wyomissing's police cars became total losses. Skylights at Berkshire Mall were broken, and thousands of roofs were replaced.
The cleanup has lasted, literally, for two years.
On Monday, some residents of Kenhorst had just reached the final stages of home repair work, according to Borough Manager Jeri Diesinger. She said some insurance companies allowed one full year to file claims, and roof repair permits required in Kenhorst are good for one year.
An awesome storm
State Farm, by market share the biggest insurance company in Pennsylvania, had 12,500 auto damage claims from that single storm, compared to 1,403 hail claims for autos in all of 2015, company spokesman Dave Phillips said.
The company had 9,300 home claims from the storm, compared to 2,814 hail claims for all of 2015, he said.
"It shows the awesomeness and unpredictability of what can happen during a storm," he said.
Many of the damaged cars were in the parking lot of the Berkshire Mall, all lined up and exposed to the frozen projectiles, he said.
"A lot of them were considered nondrivable since the windshields and rear windows were shattered," he said.
Some of the home damage was from rain and wind that entered through smashed windows, he said.
Pennsylvania usually ranks between 10th and 20th in the country in the number of hailstorms it experiences each year, with Texas, Illinois and Colorado on top, he said.
While in recent years there has been an increase in damaging hailstorms across the nation, the Berks storm still stands out, he said.
"Part of its uniqueness is how it held together so long and hit so many areas," he said.
Erie Insurance, the second-largest insurer in Pennsylvania, received more than 5,800 auto claims and more than 1,200 home claims in the first week after the storm, the largest number of claims ever generated in one area, company officials said.
Some regional insurance carriers paid out more than $15 million in claims.
County officials explored getting a disaster declaration from the state. Brian Gotschall, Berks' director of emergency services, said the area ultimately did not qualify, in part because much of the damage was insurable and little damage was done to public infrastructure.
An intense experience
The black cloud that heralded the storm that afternoon bore down on Reading as Suzanne Vega walked near Tyson-Schoener Elementary School on South Fifth Street with her 9-year-old son, student Nathan Crawford.
"All of a sudden, you could hear a rumble, like horses, a clopping noise," Vega said.
Egg-sized hail began to pelt the two of them, and they hid in the entryway of a church.
"It was intense," she said. "I got hit by one. I had a big knot on my face."
Barbara Kuhns of Bern Township sat in her Kia Optima in a bank parking lot in Wyomissing.
"It was something I'll never forget," she said. "The trees were shaking. It was unbelievable. It sounded like people were shooting inside my car."
Johnson was visiting a friend in Wyomissing when the storm hit. The hail, he said, was like golf balls and baseballs pelting the backyard.
Abruptly, it was over.
"Suddenly, it looked like a snow-covered mountain landscape," Johnson said. "The sun came out. It was nice. It was weird."
Rare event
The storm was one for the weather history books, said Dale Mohler, senior expert meteorologist of AccuWeather, near State College.
A hailstorm leaving a ground cover of ice stones, as this one did, comes only once every five or 10 years in a given place, Mohler said.
And it's only once every 30 years or so that a storm will produce hailstones as large as tennis balls, which this one did in some areas, he said.
"Hailstones are usually pea-sized or maybe marble-sized," he said.
Even more unusual is for a hailstorm to travel in an almost unbroken line as far as this one did, starting near Danville, Montour County, moving southeast through Berks County, 75 miles away, and ending in the suburbs of Philadelphia.
"That's a once-in-50-years event," he said. "It was moving fast and didn't dissipate."
It's also rare for a second round of hail to fall shortly after the first round, as it did in this storm, he said.
Areas of Pennsylvania will usually experience one hailstorm a year, and late spring and early summer are the most common times for then to hit, Mohler said. That's because the air up high can still be cold while the air closer to the ground is warm, causing rain drops to get pushed upward, where they turn into ice pellets and then fall, he said.
"That's," he said, "what we call an unstable atmosphere."
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