WOODBURY, Minn. — A spectacular, sun-splashed day morphed into something else entirely on Sunday, leaving some metro communities soaked and others dented up from large hail.

KARE 11's John Zeigler says the culprit is what's known as a quick-moving short wave, a shot of upper-level energy that rolled through the atmosphere Sunday night. With cold air aloft, instability levels became abnormally high for this time of the year and allowed for pop-up thunderstorms to develop across the Twin Cities between 7 and 8 p.m.

Those storms had significant updraft strength, leading to spectacular lightning shows and heavy rain that amounted to more than two inches of precipitation in some communities, especially in the east metro and western Wisconsin.

Pop-up downpours developed into more of an organi

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