Softball-size pieces of ice fell from the sky in northern Illinois June 10, at around 7:20 p.m. One resident provided the National Weather Service’s Chicago weather forecast office (WFO) with a photo of a hail stone that was 4.75 inches across its largest dimension. It’s the second-largest hail stone on record in the entire state of Illinois. I surely would not want to be caught outside when stuff like that starts dropping!

This demonstrates why there should be no such thing as “only” a severe thunderstorm warning (a phrase I often hear from people who are less weather-aware). At least 10 minutes before that ice rock fell on Minooka, the Chicago WFO issued a severe thunderstorm warning that covered that area.

It also shows why “large hail” is one of the three threats that the NWS Storm Prediction Center includes in its convective outlooks. The  SPC convective outlook that was in effect at the time this huge hail stone fell indicated that the area had a slight risk of hail of one inch or more in diameter.

Before you saw this huge hail stone, you might have thought a “slight” risk was nothing to worry about. After all, it technically means that there’s “only” a 15 percent probability of large hail within 25 miles of where you’re standing. That seems like a small probability in a large area.  No reason to be concerned, right?

But consider this: The “normal” probability of one-inch or larger hail falling within 25 miles of the center of Minooka (or anywhere in Illinois) at this time of year is one percent, according to climatology data from the National Severe Storms Laboratory. That means that the “slight risk” in the convective outlook for the evening of June 10 indicated a probability that was 15 times greater than normal!

Want to be more weather-aware now? Below are some helpful links:

• Storm Prediction Center convective outlooks depict the severe weather risk levels everywhere in the continental U.S. for today and each of the next seven days.
• Storm Prediction Center mesoscale discussions indicate when the SPC is thinking about issuing a severe thunderstorm watch or tornado watch.
• Hazardous Weather Outlooks (HWOs) issued by your local weather forecast office indicate whether local meteorologists expect severe weather in your area and whether they think SKYWARN storm spotters will need to activate. To find the HWO for your area, go to weather.gov, type your ZIP code in the box near the upper left-hand corner, click the “Go” button, wait for a new page to load and then look for a link that reads, “Hazardous Weather Outlook” in a section near the top labeled, “Hazardous Weather Conditions.”
• Watches and warnings. If either are in effect for your area, they’ll also be listed in the “Hazardous Weather Conditions” section of your local forecast page (see “Hazardous Weather Outlooks,” above). Remember, a watch means conditions are favorable for severe weather, making it likely. A warning means that severe weather is happening now.

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill that would require the National Weather Service (NWS) to devote a larger portion of its research budget to improving forecasts of tornadoes and hurricanes and increasing warning lead times.

The Senate has assigned H.R. 1561, the “Weather Research and Forecast Innovation Act of 2015″ to its Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

Read more about the bill in a news release issued by co-sponsor Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.).

Fort Wayne’s WANE TV gets a new broadcast meteorologist this week. Hannah Strong replaces Jesse Hawila, who took a job in Kansas City earlier this year.

Strong graduated this spring from Mississippi State University, which is known for its broadcast meteorology program.

The Fort Wayne television market is certainly not huge (it’s ranked at 111 out of 210), but it’s still somewhat unusual for a person fresh out of college to land his or her first job here. Hannah must have some strong (pun unintended) skills for WANE to have chosen her over more experienced candidates!

I encourage my readers, especially my fellow storm spotters, to join me in welcoming Strong to the market. You can follow her on Facebook, on Twitter at @WXStrong and on Instagram at @WeatherStrong.

I created a new Facebook for sharing weather information, including links to posts on this blog.

I had been sharing quite a bit of stuff on my personal Facebook timeline. But most of the information I shared related to Indiana and nearby areas, and my personal Facebook account has a lot of friends who live to far away to care.

I didn’t want to clog up their Facebook news feeds with irrelevant information, so I created the new Facebook page linked below. I welcome you to check it out:

https://www.facebook.com/RadioW9LW.weather

I’ll continue to use my Twitter account for similar purposes:

https://www.twitter.com/RadioW9LW

The  National Weather Service (NWS) Storm Prediction Center (SPC) worked closely with NWS offices, social scientists, communication specialists, FEMA, forecasters, and the general public, to arrive at this description of severe thunderstorm risk categories that SPC  uses in official NWS severe weather outlooks. More details are available here: http://www.spc.noaa.gov/misc/about.html#Severe