Wake County, North Carolina Hail Map & History
Wake County was hit as recently as 2026-09-05, 9 days ago. Wake 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 2017-09-01 near Angier.
Colored swath = NOAA MRMS radar-estimated hail size; dots = NOAA SPC reports in North Carolina. Radar-indicated, not a guarantee of damage.
The last hail here fell on 2026-09-05, around Knightdale. A free SwathIQ account -- hand-reviewed, invite within 24-48h -- pulls Wake 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 Wake County
NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has logged 49 separate hail days here since 2010 -- 2.9 a year over 17 years of record. Those days carry 180 separate reports between them, better than three on a typical one. 2 of those 17 years produced none at all. The busiest single year was 2011, with 8 hail days. The last five years track the long-run rate, with 12 days since 2022.
5 of the 49 days reached 2 inches or more -- 10%, or about one hail day in 10, the last on 2020-09-25. They land in the same month as everything else, May. Golf-ball size is rarer still: 1.75 inches or more on 11 of the 49 days.
Across the whole of North Carolina, see the North Carolina hail map and history.
Hardest-hit places in Wake County
Reports cluster nearest Raleigh -- 11 of the county's 49 hail days -- then Apex (9), Cary (9), New Hope (7) and New Hill (6). Beyond those, NOAA names Carpenter, Falls Lake, Wake Forest, Rdu International, Garner, Fuquay-Varina, Lake Wheeler, Morrisville and Angier on more than one hail day apiece.
| Place | Hail days since 2010 | Largest stone |
|---|---|---|
| 3 NNW Lake Wheeler | 4 | 1.75″ |
| Apex | 3 | 2.00″ |
| 2 Sw Falls Lake | 3 | 1.75″ |
| Wake Forest | 3 | 1.00″ |
| 1 Nw Apex | 2 | 2.00″ |
When it hails in Wake County
The season runs February through July: 42 of the 49 hail days on record fall in those 6 months (86%). May is the single busiest month, with 14 of them (29%). That peak sits inside the window rather than at either end. Hail has also been reported in August and September, outside that window. Reports span 8 of the 12 calendar months; the other 4 have never produced one.
| Month | Hail days |
|---|---|
| February | 3 |
| March | 4 |
| April | 6 |
| May | 14 |
| June | 8 |
| July | 7 |
| August | 3 |
| September | 4 |
Recent Wake County hail days
That day put 2 reports on the map, the biggest 1.5 inches near Knightdale. 2 hail days have already been reported this year.
| Date | Max hail | Reports |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-05 | 1.50″ | 2 |
| 2026-07-08 | 1.25″ | 5 |
| 2025-05-05 | 1.00″ | 5 |
| 2025-04-22 | 1.50″ | 3 |
| 2023-09-08 | 1.00″ | 1 |
| 2023-08-15 | 1.00″ | 1 |
| 2023-07-07 | 1.25″ | 2 |
| 2023-04-14 | 1.75″ | 7 |
How to read the Wake 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 2.75 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: Durham County (13 hail days), Johnston County (26) and Franklin County (16). Wake County takes more hail than any of them.
Durham County · Johnston County · Franklin County
Back to the North Carolina hail map or the U.S. hail map.
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Data & method: NOAA/NWS Storm Prediction Center reports + NOAA MRMS MESH radar, Wake County, North Carolina only. Radar-indicated and observation-based -- informational only, not a guarantee of damage or a valid claim.