Lake County, Illinois Hail Map & History
Lake County was hit as recently as 2026-08-09, 36 days ago. 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 2026-08-09, around Vernon Hills. 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.
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See call-center options ->How often it hails in Lake County
NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has logged 25 separate hail days here since 2010 -- 1.5 a year over 17 years of record. Those days carry 84 separate reports between them, better than three on a typical one. 3 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: 11 days since 2022, against 1.2 a year before that.
Most hail here stays under 2 inches: only 2 of the 25 days on record passed it, 8%, the last on 2025-05-15. Those big days do not follow the county's usual calendar: most of them fall in May, not August. Golf-ball size is rarer still: 1.75 inches or more on 6 of the 25 days.
Across the whole of Illinois, see the Illinois hail map and history.
Hardest-hit places in Lake County
Reports cluster nearest Round Lake -- 4 of the county's 25 hail days -- then Lake Villa (3), Antioch (3), Lake Zurich (3) and Wauconda (3). Beyond those, NOAA names Grayslake, Vernon Hills, Mundelein, Winthrop Harbor, Highland Park, Waukegan, Deerfield, Island Lake and Long Grove 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″ |
| Vernon Hills | 3 | 1.25″ |
| Round Lake | 3 | 1.00″ |
When it hails in Lake County
The season runs April through August: 23 of the 25 hail days on record fall in those 5 months (92%). August is the single busiest month, with 7 of them (28%). That peak closes the window: the season builds all the way to its worst month and then stops. 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 | 3 |
| August | 7 |
| September | 1 |
Recent Lake County hail days
That day put 1 report on the map, the biggest 1 inch near Vernon Hills. 2 hail days have already been reported this year.
| Date | Max hail | Reports |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-08-09 | 1.00″ | 1 |
| 2026-07-27 | 1.00″ | 1 |
| 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 |
How to read the Lake County map
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.
Nearby counties
The nearest counties with a page of their own, over the state line included: McHenry County (35 hail days), Cook County (76), DuPage County (35), Racine County, Wisconsin (17) and Walworth County, Wisconsin (28). 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.
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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.