Hail is never a good thing, anywhere!
This area is called "Hail Alley", for the frequent hail we get, caused by proximity to the mountains and associated air turbulence, with some tendency of air to be swept upwards repeatedly into freezing temperatures... ?
We had a huge hail storm in early July, 1998. Hailstones up to the size of golf balls were bouncing off our poly greenhouse, and hitting the side of our house, 35 feet away! Everything in the yard, needless to say, was pureed. The storm sewers couldn't handle the rain, and were also soon blocked with hail... despite that our neighborhood is up on a hill, a car got stuck in the water standing on our front street, which has only a very slight, normally imperceptible dip in it. A few blocks away, in a major intersection in a shopping center area, the hail and water were 4' deep and blocking the intersection; the city had to get big equipment out to plow out the hail out so that the water could eventually drain, after the storm sewers thawed; it took a few days for the bulldozed piles of hail to melt away. About half the houses in our neighborhood (including ours) ended up needing new roofing and siding as a result of the hail damage. Luckily, the drainage here is such that we didn't get any water in our basement, but some neighbors were not so lucky. Anyway, the insured property damage from the storm ended up at $60 MM! (There was another major hailstorm in 1996, with $300 MM in damages! We were spared that one, as it pummelled the neighborhoods south of us.)
It's funny... growing up on the prairies (far from the mountains, where the weather is a great deal more predictable!), farmers dreaded the "Big White Combine" (hail)... but I only ever saw one real hailstorm there - just pea-sized, with small drifts left for a few hours, and no significant damage.