Photos show how bad severe storms became in South Central Texas

Severe weather swept across South Central Texas, bringing large hail to cities like San Antonio and Austin which downed power lines and left thousands without power overnight. This marks at least the fourth hailstorm to hit the region in a month-long span since Texas’s severe weather season kicked off.

The National Weather Service began warning of large to very large hail and tornado risks across South Central Texas Tuesday afternoon. By about 5 p.m., reports began coming in of hail pummeling Austin and the Texas Hill Country. It didn’t take long for those same reports to crop up in San Antonio.

“…It just started hailing here harder than I’ve ever seen in my life,” Ash Hall tweeted Tuesday night right around 5 p.m. near North Central Austin. “Like I’m legit worried my car is finished and my windows are gonna break.”

Another X user reported golf-ball sized hail which cracked his windshield near Austin right around 6 p.m. Tuesday night. The area was under a tornado watch for several hours Tuesday afternoon and remained under a severe thunderstorm watch for much of the night.

Several hours later, reports began to emerge in San Antonio of large hail hitting the city hard. Between 10 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, social media lit up with San Antonio residents reporting hail on various sides of the city with sizes ranging from pea-sized to quarter-sized.

“Thanks Texas weather,” X user San Antonio Stephanie tweeted around 10:30 p.m. Tuesday night with pictures of a smashed windshield. “One minute we’re enjoying the weather and bbqing, and then boom… hail.”

Several videos showing large hail hitting San Antonio were submitted to MySA, and it wasn’t long before reports of downed power lines lead to CPS Energy reporting thousands of customers without power. By 10:45 p.m., CPS Energy was reporting up to 7,900 customers without power; however, the major San Antonio energy provider had previously warned “crews are ready to respond to any reports of downed power lines and outages, and please know that they will focus on working safely during this time.”

It didn’t take long for the number of outages to quickly climb amid strong winds, heavy rains, and large hail hitting San Antonio. Some 26,000 customers were reportedly without power by 11 p.m.

“Crews are working across the service area on resolving 170 weather-related outages affecting 26.5k customers, with largest outages in the 78109, 78204, 78210, 78214, 78216 & 78240 zip codes,” CPS Energy tweeted around 11 p.m. Tuesday night.

Crews seemingly worked tirelessly overnight to restore power despite the severe weather as that number dropped to 2,000 by 6:30 a.m. That was the latest update from the city-wide energy provider in San Antonio.

“Our crews worked through the night and into the morning to resolve outages by overnight severe storms,” CPS Energy officials tweeted out Wednesday morning just after 6:30 a.m. “Currently, we’re working to resolved 02 weather-related outages impacting 2,000 customers.”