Owensboro Hail Storm of March 15th, 2025: A Historic Event and Its Impact on Solar Panels

On March 15th, 2025, Owensboro, Kentucky experienced one of the most intense hail storms in recent history. What began as a routine spring thunderstorm rapidly escalated into a destructive event that left homeowners and businesses reeling. In this article, we are reporting the results of three customers which were located in the direct path of the storm and which had solar energy systems that took direct impact from the hail.

Southern Star Pipeline headquarters in Owensboro, Kentucky with a 900KW solar system. The roof of their building sustained considerable damage and allowed water into the building. Their fleet of vehicles was also heavily damaged.

Golf Ball to Baseball-Sized Hail: A Rare Phenomenon

Residents reported hailstones ranging in size from golf balls to baseballs—some of the largest ever recorded in the region. Coupled with ferocious winds estimated at 70-80 MPH, the hail traveled west to east across Owensboro, battering everything in its path. For up to 30 harrowing minutes, the storm unleashed its full fury, leaving behind a trail of broken windows, dented vehicles, and widespread property damage.

Golf ball sized hail pelted Greg Wimsatt's home on Linden Ave for over 30 minutes with 70 mph winds from the west. The hail shredded siding, roofing, and gutters on hundreds of homes and buildings throughout Owensboro.

Widespread Residential Damage

Hundreds of homes bore the brunt of the storm. Roofing materials were shredded, westerly-facing siding was punctured and cracked, and gutters were torn loose by both wind and ice. Insurance adjusters and contractors have since flooded the area, scrambling to assess and repair the extensive destruction.

Case #1 -Ed & Mary Cupp, 1309 Allen Street - (46) LG 335W East/West facing solar panels - west facing panels took a direct hit from the brunt of the hail. Roof shingles, gutters, & windows were damaged, but no visibly broken solar panels.

The west facing array took a direct hit and damaged the roof shingles, windows, gutters and other parts of the house. Although visible impact marks were visible on the panels, none of the glass was broken and they were producing energy as expected.

Case #2 - Greg Wimsatt, 1610 Linden Avenue - 16.4KW with (45) Q Cell 365W modules and Enphase Micro-inverters. Greg's house took a direct hit and the hail damaged his siding and roof shingles. Out of the 45 modules, there were two broken solar panels. The two broken panels were facing due west which was the direction the hail came from. Greg's house was pelted for approximately 30 minutes of hail and 70 mph winds. Throughout the neighborhood, there were houses with siding shredded and windows broken. It was clearly evident that the hail came from the west as any west facing surface in the neighborhood impacted.

Greg Wimsatt's solar array has solar panels facing east, west, and south. Only two panels out of forty-five were visibly damaged.

Greg's monitoring software indicates that the other solar panels are producing energy as expected. Although two of the panels had broken glass, they were still producing a lesser amount of energy. It is very important to have online monitoring setup for your solar energy system to properly support and maintain the operation for the life of the system. Some installers do not include this in their basic package offering. All of Morton Solar's systems include online monitoring as standard with the installation.

Case #3 - Southern Star Pipeline - 4700 State Route 56 - 936KW system with 2340 solar panels facing due south with a fixed tilt of 25 degrees. Southern Star's headquarters took a direct hit from the storm and the hail severely damaged the roof membrane allowing water to flood the building. Carpet, office equipment, computers, and vehicles were damaged likely resulting in over $1 Million of loss. Remarkably, not a single solar panel was noticed to be broken. There were some minor dents noticed on electrical switchgear, nothing of significance to harm the system's energy production.

Here is a time lapse video during the construction of the 900KW array for Southern Star Pipeline. The building is located near the Owensboro Regional Airport and Morton Solar served as the EPC contractor (Engineering, Procurement, Construction).

Southern Star utilizes advanced monitoring software to ensure their system produces as expected for the life of the system. The system was producing as expected the very next day after the storm and the software will log the report into its database.

Conclusion - The Owensboro hail storm was one of the most powerful hail storm's in recent history and we wanted to share this real world example of what can actually happen to solar energy systems in this type of storm. There were only 2 panels out of a total of 2341 that were broken. We feel that this is a good indication that solar panels are actually more resilient than people think. For the two solar panels that were damage, the home owners insurance will cover that cost of about $300-$400 per solar panel. Both Mary Cupp and Greg Wimsatt will require a complete removal & replacement of the solar panels so that the shingles on their homes can be replaced by a roofing company. The cost for this removal and replacement will cost approximately $6,000-$9,000 per solar system depending on the height & pitch of roof. This cost is again covered by the insurance company.

There is potential that a hail storm can damage a solar panel by causing micro-fractures in the silicon cells without breaking the glass. We will be monitoring these systems performance over the next several months to see if we can detect any loss of efficiency or performance of the solar panels. We will update this article with additional information if that is the case.

Feel free to reach out to us with questions or more information about this article.

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