The most recent reported hail day was 2025-05-15 -- 1 year ago, with nothing reported since. Lake County is hit in most years. The largest stone on record here is 2 inches, a hen egg and twice the National Weather Service's 1 inch severe criterion, reported on 2025-05-15 near Gurnee.
Colored swath = NOAA MRMS radar-estimated hail size; dots = NOAA SPC reports in Illinois. Radar-indicated, not a guarantee of damage.
The last hail here fell on 2025-05-15, around Gurnee. A free SwathIQ account -- hand-reviewed, invite within 24-48h -- pulls Lake County addresses inside a hail swath above your size threshold into a door-knock list you can export, scoped to your approved markets.
Get free access Check an addressOur US-based call center calls the homeowners in this storm and books roof inspections straight onto your calendar. You work the storm; we fill the schedule. We dial -- you do not have to knock a single door.
See call-center options ->NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has logged 23 separate hail days here since 2010 -- 1.4 a year over 17 years of record. Those days carry 82 separate reports between them, better than three on a typical one. 4 of those 17 years produced none at all. The busiest single year was 2017, with 4 hail days. The last five years have run hotter than the long-run rate: 9 days since 2022, against 1.2 a year before that.
Most hail here stays under 2 inches: only 2 of the 23 days on record passed it, 9%, the last on 2025-05-15. Those big days do not follow the county's usual calendar: most of them fall in May, not April. 6 of the 23 days reached golf-ball size, 1.75 inches or bigger.
Across the whole of Illinois, see the Illinois hail map and history.
Reports cluster nearest Round Lake -- 4 of the county's 23 hail days -- then Lake Villa (3), Antioch (3), Lake Zurich (3) and Grayslake (3). Beyond those, NOAA names Mundelein, Winthrop Harbor, Highland Park, Wauconda, Waukegan, Deerfield, Island Lake, Long Grove and Vernon Hills on more than one hail day apiece.
| Place | Hail days since 2010 | Largest stone |
|---|---|---|
| Lake Villa | 3 | 2.00″ |
| Lake Zurich | 3 | 1.75″ |
| Grayslake | 3 | 1.50″ |
| Round Lake | 3 | 1.00″ |
| Winthrop Harbor | 2 | 2.00″ |
The season runs April through August: 21 of the 23 hail days on record fall in those 5 months (91%). April is the single busiest month, with 6 of them (26%). That peak opens the window: the season starts at its worst and eases off from there. Hail has also been reported in January and September, outside that window. Reports span 7 of the 12 calendar months; the other 5 have never produced one.
| Month | Hail days |
|---|---|
| January | 1 |
| April | 6 |
| May | 2 |
| June | 5 |
| July | 2 |
| August | 6 |
| September | 1 |
That day put 7 reports on the map, the biggest 2 inches near Gurnee. No hail day has been reported here yet this year.
| Date | Max hail | Reports |
|---|---|---|
| 2025-05-15 | 2.00″ | 7 |
| 2024-08-27 | 1.25″ | 4 |
| 2024-08-04 | 1.00″ | 1 |
| 2024-07-15 | 1.00″ | 1 |
| 2023-04-20 | 1.00″ | 3 |
| 2023-04-04 | 1.75″ | 8 |
| 2023-01-03 | 1.00″ | 1 |
| 2022-08-03 | 1.00″ | 1 |
The colored swath is NOAA's MRMS radar estimate of the largest hail per ~1 km cell; the dots are SPC ground reports. Yellow is about an inch, red 1.5 to 2″, purple 2″ and up (hail size vs roof damage). On this county's worst day the reports reached 2 inches, which is the purple band. Look up a street address with the hail history by address tool.
The nearest counties with a page of their own, over the state line included: McHenry County (35 hail days), Cook County (75), DuPage County (33), Racine County, Wisconsin (16) and Walworth County, Wisconsin (27). Lake County sits in between.
McHenry County · Cook County · DuPage County · Racine County, Wisconsin · Walworth County, Wisconsin
Back to the Illinois hail map or the U.S. hail map.
Data & method: NOAA/NWS Storm Prediction Center reports + NOAA MRMS MESH radar, Lake County, Illinois only. Radar-indicated and observation-based -- informational only, not a guarantee of damage or a valid claim.