The afternoon heat pressed down on Moradabad like a fever — no one imagined that within the hour, ice would fall from the sky and kill hundreds.

The Day the Sky Turned Black: India's Killer Hailstorm of 1888

When Ice Fell Like Cannonballs on Moradabad

In fifteen terrifying minutes, a freak hailstorm killed over 246 people in Moradabad, India — still the deadliest on record.

The afternoon heat pressed down on Moradabad like a fever. It was May 10, 1888, and farmers in this bustling trading town in British India's United Provinces were finishing their work, eager to escape the pre-monsoon swelter. Then the sky changed. What had been a hazy afternoon suddenly darkened to an unnatural twilight. The wind shifted, carrying a strange metallic scent. Within minutes, the deadliest hailstorm in recorded history would begin.

The first stones fell like warnings — marble-sized pellets clattering against mud-brick walls and tiled roofs. But the storm was only gathering its fury. Eyewitnesses later described what came next as apocalyptic: hailstones the size of oranges, some reportedly as large as cricket balls, plummeting from the churning clouds with devastating velocity. The impact was immediate and catastrophic.

People caught in the open had no chance. Farmers collapsed in fields, their skulls fractured by ice. Women drawing water from wells crumpled where they stood. Children playing in courtyards were struck down before their mothers could reach them. The hail fell with such concentrated violence that even those who sought shelter beneath trees found no safe…

💡 Some hailstones from the 1888 Moradabad storm were reportedly preserved in ice and shipped to Calcutta for scientific study, but melted before proper measurement could be completed.