Wylie area pounded by baseball-sized hail

WYLIE, Texas - The National Weather Service got nearly 60 reports of hail all across North Texas during the Monday afternoon storms.

The city of Wylie in Collin County was one of the heaviest hit areas, with hail larger than 4 inches in diameter pummeling several homes,  businesses and vehicles. City officials are assessing all the damage caused by Monday's storms.

At least one person received minor injuries from the hail. Roy Cleary, a Wylie pastor, had to get stitches in his head after glass shattered in his face as he was caught in the storm driving home.

"I was coming from Walmart and got about halfway, and it started coming down," Cleary said. "There was nothing I could do."

Cleary managed to run to a nearby restaurant where an employee called 911.

Anthony and Sherry Pettofrezzo said the baseball and softball-sized hail stones also penetrated their roof and soaked the inside of their home. They have water damage inside the ceilings, walls and floors.

“This is what it sounded like coming through. It was like war… coming through the roof and coming through the windows,” they said.  

The windows in their truck were broken. Their yard signs were torn up and their décor was destroyed. But they are just one of many families in the neighborhood with a long day of cleanup ahead.

The bulk of the damage centered around neighborhoods located along Highway 78. At a nearby RV park, there were plenty of broken windows and damage to RV roofs, cars and trucks.

“We came to check on my sister’s place and it’s just all torn up. Almost every single window is broken. The car windows are broken, everything. And she’s out of town,” said Angela Baltzer.

The city of Wylie had to shut down the Public Safety Building because of hail damage. The building was the city’s hub for police, fire and 911 communications.

Wylie police said the storm busted out windows on some police cars and shattered windows in the building. They are now trying to find a temporary location and dispatch services have been transferred over to Collin County.

“We are just coming right off the hail storm not too long ago. It damage a number of police cars. You know, insurance was in the area with a number of claims on vehicles roofs. And I know several people that just had their roofs repaired that now are going to have to go through that process again,” said Craig Kelly, a spokesman for the city of Wylie.

The damage is also giving kids in the Wylie Independent School District an unexpected day off because many of the district’s 19 schools suffered significant damage.

“We’ll have maintenance crews and some outside contractors assessing every classroom, every roof. We need to turn the HVAC units on. They are all roof mounted and so it’s possible they took some damage. These are things we can’t do until daylight,” said Ian Halperin, the Wylie ISD communications director.

Not too long ago about 40 HVAC units were totaled because of another storm. The district just finished replacing those and may have to do it all again.

The district said all classes would resume on Wednesday.