Thursday night’s hail storm (Jan. 10, 1963) sent some of Marion’s older residents searching for their photographs of hail stone collections picked up in the wake of the monster hail storm that hit Marion Feb. 16, 1926.

Balls of ice which rained down on Marion, Spillertown and Scotsboro that day were described as being “as big as hen eggs” and pictures preserved as mementoes of the storm prove it.

One Scotsboro man struck on the head by the hail died of his injuries. A glass-enclosed flower house near the cemetery was left a shambles of gaping steel framework, and many homes in an area north of Boulevard were unroofed, many had broken windows.

The glass supply available in the city was exhausted by those who hastened to make repairs, and more had to be shipped in to replace windows broken by the hail.

The 1926 hail storm was the worst to hit Marion since June 2, 1916 when stones as big as lemons plummeted down all over town. Some householders scooped up the ice and stocked their refrigerators. In the reference files of the Daily Republican is one of the picture postcards made that day showing a bowl of the record hail stones.

(Extracted from Glances at Life, Homer Butler, Saturday, January 12, 1963 article)