Cherokee County was hit as recently as 2026-05-18, 74 days ago. Cherokee County is hit in most years. The largest stone on record here is 4 inches, a grapefruit and 4 times the National Weather Service's 1 inch severe criterion, reported on 2011-04-09 near Cherokee.
Colored swath = NOAA MRMS radar-estimated hail size; dots = NOAA SPC reports in Iowa. Radar-indicated, not a guarantee of damage.
The last hail here fell on 2026-05-18, around Washta. A free SwathIQ account -- hand-reviewed, invite within 24-48h -- pulls Cherokee 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 29 separate hail days here since 2010 -- 1.7 a year over 17 years of record. They carry 42 reports in total: most hail days here are logged from a single spot. 3 of those 17 years produced none at all. The busiest single year was 2010, with 4 hail days. The last five years track the long-run rate, with 10 days since 2022.
Most hail here stays under 2 inches: only 2 of the 29 days on record passed it, 7%, the last on 2025-08-08. Those big days do not follow the county's usual calendar: most of them fall in April, not May. Golf-ball size is rarer still: 1.75 inches or more on 4 of the 29 days.
Across the whole of Iowa, see the Iowa hail map and history.
Reports cluster nearest Cherokee -- 8 of the county's 29 hail days -- then Marcus (5), Aurelia (4), Larrabee (4) and Cleghorn (4). Beyond those, NOAA names Quimby, Washta and Peterson on more than one hail day apiece.
| Place | Hail days since 2010 | Largest stone |
|---|---|---|
| Cherokee | 4 | 4.00″ |
| Aurelia | 4 | 1.75″ |
| Cleghorn | 3 | 1.50″ |
| Marcus | 3 | 1.50″ |
| 5 Ene Larrabee | 2 | 1.00″ |
The season runs April through August: 25 of the 29 hail days on record fall in those 5 months (86%). May is the single busiest month, with 8 of them (28%). That peak sits inside the window rather than at either end. Hail has also been reported in September, outside that window. Reports span 6 of the 12 calendar months; the other 6 have never produced one.
| Month | Hail days |
|---|---|
| April | 7 |
| May | 8 |
| June | 5 |
| July | 1 |
| August | 4 |
| September | 4 |
That day put 1 report on the map, the biggest 1 inch near Washta. 2 hail days have already been reported this year.
| Date | Max hail | Reports |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-05-18 | 1.00″ | 1 |
| 2026-05-15 | 1.25″ | 2 |
| 2025-08-08 | 2.00″ | 1 |
| 2025-04-28 | 1.00″ | 1 |
| 2025-04-17 | 1.75″ | 3 |
| 2024-05-20 | 1.50″ | 1 |
| 2024-05-08 | 1.00″ | 1 |
| 2024-04-26 | 1.25″ | 2 |
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 4 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: Buena Vista County (20 hail days), Ida County (21) and O'Brien County (34). Cherokee County sits in between.
Buena Vista County · Ida County · O'Brien County
Back to the Iowa hail map or the U.S. hail map.
Data & method: NOAA/NWS Storm Prediction Center reports + NOAA MRMS MESH radar, Cherokee County, Iowa only. Radar-indicated and observation-based -- informational only, not a guarantee of damage or a valid claim.