Polk County was hit as recently as 2026-05-16, 76 days ago. Polk County is hit in most years. 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 2011-06-19 near Duncan.
Colored swath = NOAA MRMS radar-estimated hail size; dots = NOAA SPC reports in Nebraska. Radar-indicated, not a guarantee of damage.
The last hail here fell on 2026-05-16, around Osceola. A free SwathIQ account -- hand-reviewed, invite within 24-48h -- pulls Polk 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 28 separate hail days here since 2010 -- 1.6 a year over 17 years of record. Those days carry 62 separate reports between them, two or three on a typical one. 3 of those 17 years produced none at all. The busiest single year was 2011, with 5 hail days. The last five years track the long-run rate, with 9 days since 2022.
3 of the 28 days reached 2 inches or more -- 11%, or about one hail day in 9, the last on 2026-05-16. Those big days do not follow the county's usual calendar: most of them fall in June, not May. 12 of the 28 days reached golf-ball size, 1.75 inches or bigger.
Across the whole of Nebraska, see the Nebraska hail map and history.
Reports cluster nearest Osceola -- 14 of the county's 28 hail days -- then Shelby (12), Stromsburg (6), Duncan (2) and Clarks (2). That one town is named on 50% of them. Beyond those, NOAA names Columbus and Polk on more than one hail day apiece.
| Place | Hail days since 2010 | Largest stone |
|---|---|---|
| Osceola | 10 | 2.00″ |
| 3 NE Shelby | 6 | 1.25″ |
| Shelby | 4 | 1.75″ |
| 6 W Osceola | 2 | 2.00″ |
| 1 S Osceola | 2 | 1.75″ |
The season runs May through August: 24 of the 28 hail days on record fall in those 4 months (86%). May is the single busiest month, with 8 of them (29%). That peak opens the window: the season starts at its worst and eases off from there. Hail has also been reported in April and October, outside that window. Reports span 6 of the 12 calendar months; the other 6 have never produced one.
| Month | Hail days |
|---|---|
| April | 3 |
| May | 8 |
| June | 7 |
| July | 5 |
| August | 4 |
| October | 1 |
That day put 2 reports on the map, the biggest 2 inches near Osceola. 1 hail day has already been reported this year.
| Date | Max hail | Reports |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-05-16 | 2.00″ | 2 |
| 2025-08-17 | 1.75″ | 2 |
| 2025-05-19 | 1.75″ | 2 |
| 2025-04-01 | 1.00″ | 1 |
| 2023-07-04 | 1.25″ | 2 |
| 2023-05-12 | 1.00″ | 1 |
| 2022-08-18 | 1.50″ | 1 |
| 2022-06-04 | 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: Butler County (34 hail days), York County (45) and Nance County (21). Polk County sits in between.
Butler County · York County · Nance County
Back to the Nebraska hail map or the U.S. hail map.
Data & method: NOAA/NWS Storm Prediction Center reports + NOAA MRMS MESH radar, Polk County, Nebraska only. Radar-indicated and observation-based -- informational only, not a guarantee of damage or a valid claim.