Okay this isn’t something you see everyday.

On Saturday, several counties in Idaho were hit with extreme thunderstorms resulting in some areas to be flooded.

Rain wasn’t the only thing falling from the sky.

A massive hailstorm also swept across Idaho, leaving front yards and neighborhood streets buried beneath piles of hail.

Here was the scene:

The New York Post reported more on the bizarre weather incident:

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Parts of Idaho looked like the Arctic on the first full weekend of summer when torrential thunderstorms and hail flooded the streets with ice floats, according to dramatic social-media footage.

In a wild scene Saturday outside the state’s capital of Boise, a resident was caught on Instagram footage paddling a bright green kayak through the ice-covered floodwaters rushing down a suburban road — while a rural county near Nevada was hammered with a staggering 553 lightning strikes.

“It was small hail, but there was an awful lot of it,” said Josh Smith, the Boise-based National Weather Service’s lead meteorologist, to the Idaho Statesman.

Cars parked along local streets were nearly swallowed by surging water from the relentless rains – with some vehicles submerged up to their windows – while trash bins floated through the makeshift river, the surreal footage shows.

The widespread storm damage across the Gem State’s Treasure Valley region – a heavily-populated area that encompasses parts of Ada and Canyon counties – was also fueled by winds topping 50 mph, the Statesman said.

As for the hail, “Even some of our employees that were in northwest Meridian said they had several inches of small hail on the ground,” Smith said.

“That probably led to some of the flooding issues with some of those neighborhoods because all that melted off quickly, and the drains weren’t able to handle it – in addition to the inch-plus rain that we received,” Smith explained.

Lightning was also relentless throughout the storm, with rural Owyhee County – located about 150 miles south of Boise, near the Nevada border – recording a mind-boggling 553 lightning strikes.

Another video of the storm:

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Earlier in the week Wisconsin was also hit with flooding and hailstorms:

The Green Bay Gazette provided further details on the storm:

The Green Bay area continues to deal with widespread flooding after a quick, heavy storm dropped torrential rain and large volumes of pebble-sized hail across the region.

The June 24 storm turned streets into rivers across the region, damaged buildings and flooded basements. About 300 Brown County customers are without power as of 10:30 p.m. June 24, according to Wisconsin Public Service’s outage map. The number is down about 200 customers from 9 p.m.

The storm poured more than 2 inches of rain in less than an hour, according to a local weather gauge.

The Green Bay Police Department issued a flood advisory and asked residents to avoid unnecessary travel until conditions improve. It said “a very large number of roads” remain submerged in water and are impassible. In general, the police said motorists shouldn’t try to drive on a roadway where they cannot see the ground.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

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