McHenry County was hit as recently as 2026-06-24, 37 days ago. McHenry County is hit in most years, and usually several times over. The largest stone on record here is 2.75 inches, a baseball and 2.8 times the National Weather Service's 1 inch severe criterion, reported on 2018-05-02 near Richmond.
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 2026-06-24, around Huntley. A free SwathIQ account -- hand-reviewed, invite within 24-48h -- pulls McHenry 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 ->NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has logged 35 separate hail days here since 2010 -- 2.1 a year over 17 years of record. Those days carry 94 separate reports between them, two or three on a typical one. No year since 2010 has gone by without at least one. The busiest single year was 2015, with 4 hail days. The last five years track the long-run rate, with 9 days since 2022.
4 of the 35 days reached 2 inches or more -- 11%, or about one hail day in 9, the last on 2024-08-27. They land in the same month as everything else, April. Golf-ball size is rarer still: 1.75 inches or more on 5 of the 35 days.
Across the whole of Illinois, see the Illinois hail map and history.
Reports cluster nearest Woodstock -- 11 of the county's 35 hail days -- then Marengo (9), McHenry (9), Huntley (7) and Crystal Lake (6). Beyond those, NOAA names Algonquin, Union, Richmond, Spring Grove, Lake in the Hills, Wonder Lake, Harvard and Cary on more than one hail day apiece.
| Place | Hail days since 2010 | Largest stone |
|---|---|---|
| McHenry | 8 | 1.50″ |
| Crystal Lake | 6 | 1.75″ |
| Woodstock | 6 | 1.50″ |
| Huntley | 5 | 2.75″ |
| Marengo | 4 | 1.25″ |
The season runs April through August: 31 of the 35 hail days on record fall in those 5 months (89%). April is the single busiest month, with 11 of them (31%). That peak opens the window: the season starts at its worst and eases off from there. Hail has also been reported in February, March and September, outside that window. Reports span 8 of the 12 calendar months; the other 4 have never produced one.
| Month | Hail days |
|---|---|
| February | 1 |
| March | 2 |
| April | 11 |
| May | 6 |
| June | 6 |
| July | 4 |
| August | 4 |
| September | 1 |
That day put 4 reports on the map, the biggest 1.5 inches near Huntley. 2 hail days have already been reported this year.
| Date | Max hail | Reports |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-06-24 | 1.50″ | 4 |
| 2026-04-14 | 1.00″ | 2 |
| 2025-08-16 | 1.50″ | 3 |
| 2024-08-27 | 2.50″ | 5 |
| 2024-06-25 | 1.00″ | 1 |
| 2024-02-27 | 1.00″ | 1 |
| 2023-06-28 | 1.00″ | 1 |
| 2023-04-04 | 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 2.75 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: Lake County (23 hail days), Boone County (20), Kane County (43) and Walworth County, Wisconsin (27). McHenry County sits in between.
Lake County · Boone County · Kane County · 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, McHenry County, Illinois only. Radar-indicated and observation-based -- informational only, not a guarantee of damage or a valid claim.