Preston Hawkins and his three children were playing in the front yard while the hailstorm came through his Conway neighborhood Tuesday.
"It was very strange," he says. "We saw just one piece of hail fall from the sky and that was it for like a minute. Then all of the sudden, we could hear this loud noise and soon after the hail started to fall really bad."
The larger than golfball, but smaller than baseball-sized hail, left cars dented, car windows shattered, and a sheet of ice along the roads.
Hawkins says only ice fell from the sky during the downpour, no rain. He said he was like the children for the few minutes and enjoyed a sight he's never seen, but excitement turned to fear as the storm didn't let up.
"It started to get to me. I could hear my car window cracking, and I knew if it kept on for ten more minutes, my window would shatter," he says.
The hail damaged the hood and roof of both his cars. It ripped through his plastic gutters in four places, leaving a hole as a reminder.
His neighbor, Julie Dehardt, was forced to drive through the storm. Wednesday, she tried to count the dents in her car. But each time she counted, she found new divots.
"I know they tell you to pull over during a hail storm," she says. "But my instincts kicked in and all I could think about was getting my child home to safety."
She compares the sound of the hail to a car constantly backfiring. "The hail hitting the windshield was the worst. It was so loud, and I thought my windshield was about to break open with me and my child in the car."
Skipper's Body Shop owner Rickey Skipper has continuously been receiving calls from people with damaged vehicles. "With the damage that I've been seeing today, the only way to get these big of dents out of a car is to have it professionally done," Skipper says.
He suggests the best thing for owners affected by the storm is to replace the damaged parts. "We can try the different methods to pop out the dents, but these are the worst I've ever seen. It'll be very difficult to repair these bad of dents completely."
South Carolina's Insurance News Service says the total costs for how much damage the storm caused hasn't been release, and there won't be any rough estimates for a few days.
A few days, Hawkins says, he'll gladly wait to get things fixed. He's just thankful things weren't worst than they are.
"I just look at the dents I have in my cars and think about the people in Mississippi with flooded homes," Hawkins says. "I'm grateful because things could have been much worse."
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