The morning after a hailstorm is not an ideal time to visit a farmer. I thought maybe I'd quietly do a few field checks and commiserate later. I should have known I'd find Jeff Brown knee-deep in the aftermath.

The Blue Mound, Illinois, farmer was the first person I texted on June 18 after storms ripped through our area the previous night. He's almost always the first person I ping when I need to know something crop related. We live close enough in proximity that I knew hail had hit because I watched it pummel my garden. But it didn't last long, and sometimes you get lucky.

Not this time.

Hail damage is almost always ugly. But I wasn't prepared for the silage smell that turns your stomach sour. And there was something about seeing a father and sons surveying the damage together that left a mark on my heart.

Our pickups met on a side road. Windows lowered. Looks were exchanged. Doors opened. Hugs happened and frustrations about what to do next got pushed out into the open.

Battered soybeans were already starting to show new leaves. That was positive.

But the corn ...

Leaves hung in tatters on more mature corn with a few stalks broken at the soil surface. Down the road, younger corn (planted May 20 and in the 4- to 5-leaf stage) had been whittled down to stalk nubbins. Herbicides and sidedressed nitrogen had been applied just two days prior on the then-growing crop.

The morning after the hail event, Brown was already on the phone exploring the availability of replacement seed. His farm business partners were busting butt to get to other fields to assess overall damage. The randomness was almost as amazing as the devastation. Nearby, other fields stood nearly unscathed.

WEIGHING OPTIONS

One of the best things about a storm is the people who help us weather it. Brown's friend, Kevin Kalb, an Indiana grower who is a perennial National Corn Growers Association Yield Contest winner, suggested the way to assess whether the injured corn stand still had potential was to spray paint an area within the field.

When corn is roughly V5 or smaller, the growing point is usually still protected below the soil surface, so even severe leaf shredding may result in limited yield loss if the plant resumes growth. Once corn reaches V6 and beyond, the growing point is above ground, and the crop becomes more vulnerable to permanent injury.

Painting the plant has been a popular field hack that allows farmers to see how much the plant is growing each day. Think of it like marking your kids' growth on a doorframe and coming back to check again. In the case of corn, it can be hard to assess if the growing point is bruised or damaged enough to prevent regrowth.

Brown painted the equivalent of a one-thousandth of an acre representative sample in the hardest-hit field. In 48 hours after painting, he could already see portions of green tissue separating from the painted areas to show regrowth.

The field was planted at 38,000 seeds per acre. Field scouting indicated half of the population remained after the hail.

After four days, plants within that sprayed test strip had grown enough to indicate there were enough viable stalks to potentially produce 16 harvestable ears. A quick yield calculation estimated a 112-bushel-per-acre (bpa) crop potential on that field, barring any other production problems. Weeds and disease will be a concern if he keeps the existing crop.

On the other hand, replanting in late June comes with a yield penalty -- and requires additional input costs both to replant and kill the remaining existing crop. Another replant concern is that frost in the fall can catch a crop planted this late, resulting in corn that needs to be dried and/or is of low quality.

More rain had already fallen on the area, and the long-range forecast was indicating additional precipitation on the way. Pushing corn planting into July isn't a great option for this area, even if it is shorter season, he said.

Brown's next step is to plant some soybeans in that same section to see if they will grow since a full dose of corn herbicide went on just days ahead of the hail.

"We've had enough rain that the herbicide may have metabolized enough to let the beans grow. I already have the planter hooked up to do double-crop soybeans after wheat, so we're good there," he said. "Stay tuned. We're still deciding what to do on this younger corn."

PATIENCE CAN BE STRESSFUL

Cropping decisions are hard enough but making them after hail is complicated. Finding the patience to wait and see is hard, said Purdue University corn specialist Daniel Quinn.

"It really takes four to five days to see how corn is going to come back. It depends a lot on how tight the leaves were rolled, stage of crop -- kind of the same as we say with flattened corn. Give the crop a chance," Quinn said.

As the corn plant closes in on pollination, leaf defoliation becomes more of a concern. The University of Nebraska provides a complete write-up on mid-season assessments of hail on corn and soybeans here: https://cropwatch.unl.edu/… and a complete list of hail resources here: https://cropwatch.unl.edu/….

No matter the crop stage, Quinn recommended contacting your crop insurance agent as soon as a wind or hail event occurs. Stand counts early in the season help document and establish a baseline. Photographs as soon as possible after the hail event to document damage and continued documentation throughout the season are recommended.

Corn smut and bacterial disease are the main worries with corn following a hail event, Quinn added. "However, there's been a lot of research done to show that fungicides do not help corn after a hail event. I know a lot of farmers swear by doing that, but we've never seen a response, because fungicides generally do not control corn smut and bacterial diseases," he said.

HAIL KNOW-HOW

There are also misconceptions about how hail forms -- although you aren't likely to find anyone that disagrees that the "white combine" is ever good.

For many years, it was thought that hail formed by cycling in a thunderstorm, getting bigger and bigger as it took multiple journeys up and down until it was too heavy for the updraft.

DTN Ag Meteorologist John Baranick said it is now known that water goes up through the updraft, colliding with supercool (below-freezing) water to grow hailstones, then they get too heavy and fall out, growing as they do. "The really large hailstones are the ones that collide with each other and stick together, creating the really lumpy ones that look like they have spikes," Baranick said. Find a complete description of how hail forms here: https://www.dtn.com/….

How hail happens doesn't change that it happened, but for Brown, there's a lot of thought being put into what happens next.

"We're still figuring it all out. Our whole community took a beating," he said, noting that grain bins, trees and property all sustained damage. The local school lost its roof.

"This is corn. It isn't what we wanted for this crop, but everyone is safe. That's what is really important," he said.

For a DTN report on replant and crop insurance, go to

https://www.dtnpf.com/….

Pamela Smith can be reached at pamela.smith@dtn.com

Follow her on social media platform X @PamSmithDTN

(c) Copyright 2026 DTN, LLC. All rights reserved.