Significant storms across the South this week have produced an array of severe weather with tornadoes and wind damage reported across the region but hail likely cemented itself into the history books.

The FOX Forecast Center said that for five straight days, hail that measured at least 4 inches in diameter, which is unusually large for the South in June, fell over communities in Oklahoma, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas.

Local National Weather Service offices issue Severe Thunderstorm Warnings when hail the size of a quarter, or an inch in diameter, is anticipated, but these storms crushed even what is typically considered sizable.

Storms on Sunday produced hail larger than 4 inches in diameter, which is roughly the size of a softball, in Denton County, Texas, on the north side of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. Damage to cars and homes was reported, but there were no accounts of any significant injuries.

On Monday, the Lone Star State was once again the target of large hail. This time the giant stones fell in Burleson, on the south side of Fort Worth. Asides from golf-ball-size hail, stones at least 4 inches in diameter were also reported.

Tuesday brought more of the same, with a storm chaser witnessing iPhone-sized hail in Shamrock, Texas.

"We saw a decent number of stones ranging between 2 to 3 inches – many of which were shattered," said Jana Houser, a meteorologist and storm chaser. "As we looked a little more, we found a few that were about 4 inches, but then found this one."

The largest hail reports Wednesday shifted eastward, with a hailstone estimated to be around 5 inches in diameter that fell in Brooksville, Mississippi. That's roughly the size of a grapefruit.

After an investigation, a team of meteorologists and climatologists determined the hail was the second-largest in the state's history and measured around 4.88".

"While not a state record it is the second-largest recorded hailstone for Mississippi and very unusual for mid-June. In fact, this stone was nearly 2 inches larger than the previous June record of 3.00 inches," the state's climatologist said.

(Dianne Pruitt / FOX Weather)

On Thursday, hailstones at least 5 inches in diameter were reported in Sanger, Texas. Venessa Henderson took a picture of the hail in Sanger said her hailstone wasn't even the biggest and said she saw photos of hail that could have been about 6 inches in diameter.

(Venessa Henderson / FOX Weather)

Southern Georgia saw hail about 4 inches in diameter Thursday. The softball-sized hailstone in the Peach State was the first time in June that such a sizable chunk had been witnessed and the only fifteenth occasion that a hailstone that measured 4 inches or larger had been reported. According to a NOAA database, the last time Georgia saw hail that measured 4 inches or larger was in 2011, along the Tennessee-Georgia border.

7 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT HAIL

(FOX Weather)

Why all the large hail?

The FOX Forecast Center said an unusually strong subtropical jet stream in combination with a flow from a massive upper-level low over the Great Lakes and plenty of moisture were the root causes for the event.

"It was very anomalous," an official at the National Weather Service said. "This was not something that we see regularly throughout the summer."

Meteorologists at the NWS also said lapse rates, or the amount of temperature change through the lower levels of the atmosphere, were off the charts with massive temperature drops, causing more unstable air.

Impressive days of hail from severe thunderstorms

Here's what led to the large ice stones this week during the severe weather over the South.

WHY DOES THE SKY SOMETIMES TURN GREEN DURING THUNDERSTORMS?

Hail forms when raindrops become suspended in updrafts. The ice chunks typically start off as the size of peas and dimes but grow as they are suspended in the thunderstorm cloud. When the hailstone grows to a size that the updraft can no longer support, it falls towards the ground.

The largest hailstone ever reported in the U.S. fell in Vivian, South Dakota, on July 23, 2010. NOAA reported the ice chunk was 8 inches wide and weighed nearly 2 pounds.

(NWS / FOX Weather)

According to the FOX Forecast Center, this week was the first time on record that 5-inch hail or larger had been reported for three consecutive days.

After training more than 1 million of its store employees from 200 regional academies, Walmart is opening training centers in its distribution centers. The first one is in Texas.

A group of 50 managers will graduate Friday from the new academy in Sanger, which is north of Dallas in Denton County.

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"We started this concept of investing in our employees about three years ago, and we've seen success with it," said Steve Miller, vice president of Walmart supply chain. "The needs of our associates in supply chain are evolving, and we want to set them up for success. Skills needed today are different than 15 or 20 years ago, and as we recruit them, we want them to have fulfilling jobs."

The point is to train supervisors, Miller said, because Walmart is a big company, and supervisors are the front line. "It's a critical role," he said.

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Walmart has the largest non-military supply chain operation in the U.S. and the world. Two hundred distribution centers that supply stores and fulfillment centers for online orders are run by more than 100,000 employees, including 9,000 drivers for its private fleet of trucks.

Most distribution centers are like the Sanger facility, which is 1.2 million square feet. It's a general merchandise warehouse that supplies 140 Walmart stores and Sam's Clubs. The facility employs 945 people who are supervised by dozens of merchandise category and function managers who will go through the training.

The Sanger Academy will train employees from 15 distribution centers in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. The company plans to set up 10 academies that will each train about 15 distribution centers.

The academies are starting out with leadership, safety and supply chain training and will add course work in technology and other functions in the future, said Clint Hendryx, manager of the Sanger academy's permanent staff of seven people. He had been a receiving operations manager at the facility.

"I think it's great that Walmart is investing this time in me," said Jason Grounds, a Sanger manager over shipping and logistics. "I'm being taken off the floor, and they're teaching me policies and things that don't get a lot of focus otherwise, ways to be a better leader and take us back to the origins of the company with Sam Walton."

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon has spent more money on training and increased hourly worker pay.

Walmart introduced in-store training centers in 2016 with one in a Carrollton Supercenter. Last year, Walmart created education benefits with its $1-a-day college degrees in business and supply chain. And earlier this week, it announced new programs with colleges for its employees to complete health care degrees.

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This month, the principal of Linda Tutt High School in the small town of Sanger, Texas, said he was approached by an eighth grader eager to share that he had bought a three-in-one men's shampoo, conditioner and body wash.

"The first thing he did was he said: 'Hey. Look in my hair,'" the principal, Anthony Love, recalled in an interview Tuesday.

"And so I looked at it, and it looked clean," Love said. "But he was excited about it because it was the first time he's ever had his own shampoo."

The student, who lives with his mother and sister, said he had avoided using their shampoo because of the smell, Love said.

But he was finally able to get his own shampoo, as well as food, at a new student-run grocery store on the school's campus where students can buy food and other essentials, without money.

"It makes you reflect back on yourself and some of the things that we take for granted, and it helps you put life in perspective," Love said of the student encounter.

The store, which opened in November, makes canned goods, produce, laundry detergent, soap and other products available free of charge to students and faculty members of the school district and the 9,000 residents of Sanger, about 50 miles north of Dallas.

Believed to be the first of its kind at a high school, the on-site store was the brainchild of Paul Juarez, executive director of First Refuge Ministries, one of the operation's sponsors. Juarez, whose nonprofit provides free medical, dental, mental health counseling and food, worked in the grocery business for about 20 years. It was where he got his first job as a package clerk at age 16.

"If we can make our food pantries look like a grocery store" and give people a card to shop with as they would at any other place, Juarez said, then "we can keep dignity in people."

Juarez's idea came to life with a grant from Texas Health Resources, which identified Sanger as a food-insecure area.

About 43 percent of students in the Sanger Independent School District are considered economically disadvantaged. About 2,750 students are enrolled in the school district, 3.6 percent of whom are considered homeless, Love said.

"That was before Covid happened," he said. "So I can only imagine that number is a lot higher."

The store is open three days a week to students and district employees and on Tuesday evenings to the rest of the community.

Instead of money, shoppers use points. All students get points based on the sizes of their families. A small family — with three or fewer people in the household — is allotted 40 points, and a large family with six or more people gets 65 points. The bigger the family, the more points. The points are replenished every week.

Items in the grocery store cost one to three points.

"They're able to purchase a lot of items with those points," Love said.

Students can earn more points through positive office referrals from staff members for "outstanding" performance in the classroom or around the school building, Love said. Students can also earn points through on-campus jobs, such as in the school garden or as mentors or assistants.

Love said the school requires students to apply for the jobs to gain real-world experience and learn responsibility.

"There's a job application that they have to fill out. They have to have two references. They have to maintain passing grades," he said.

Juarez said the point system aims to prevent anyone from feeling embarrassed about needing assistance.

"It won't embarrass them that they have to — from time to time — go to a food pantry," he said.

The high school also partnered with the grocery company Albertsons to open the store, which is run entirely by students who stock shelves, maintain inventory, check out customers and bag groceries. The store employs five students, including three store managers.

One of the managers, Preston Westbrook, an 11th grader at Linda Tutt High School, said the work has been rewarding.

"It makes me feel better that they're feeling good and not having the life struggles trying to figure out where they're going to get their food or the money to be able to do this," Westbrook told NBC Dallas-Fort Worth.

Juarez said some of the $300,000 in grant money has been used to hire a counselor and a nurse, as well as a resource navigator who meets with parents at First Refuge Ministries in Sanger and helps them navigate how to get resources they need.

Some people online have criticized the store's point payment system for trading needed aid for good acts. Love said some people have asked about the point system. His answer, he said, is: No one is turned away.

"If anybody needs something, I will go above and beyond myself," he said. "And I would even deliver the groceries to their house if I needed to."

Anyone who criticizes the program doesn't understand it, Juarez said.

"Everybody gets points," Juarez said. "If you don't want to use your points, you can donate your points."

Love said he has been "very intentional and strategic" by requiring students to go through the grocery store.

"If everybody's doing it, it takes away the embarrassment," he said.

Juarez said that he has spoken to school officials in other states, including California, Delaware, North Carolina and Oregon, who want to follow the approach to addressing food insecurity and that he has offered his assistance because he wants it to take off.

"If the school district can be so important like that, we can change a community," he said. "And if we can change a community, we can change an area. And then, if we change an area, we can change the state. If we can change the state, we can change the country. If we can change the country, we can change the world."

Power outages were planned in two North Texas cities, one because of the strain on the grid during the intense heatwave, the other because of enormous growth.

POWER OUTAGES AVOIDED IN SANGER

The City of Sanger posted a message for residents on its website warning of planned power outages Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

"While this heat is hard on us, it also puts strain on our system. To help reduce some of that strain, the City of Sanger Electric customers may experience rolling power outages," the message on the website reads.

The outages were planned for 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Friday, and continue from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. The planned outages were expected to last approximately 30 minutes with one hour between each outage.

NBC 5 asked Sanger about the planned blackouts, the city's public information officer said they're "not interested in discussing it."

Some residents said outages began Thursday.

The latest news from around North Texas.

Misty Moore said she and her children lost before around 6 p.m. Throughout the 30-minute outage, Moore said her thermostat jumped 12 degrees.

“I would say that there are a lot of people upset, mostly that there aren’t a lot of communities doing this and the fact that there wasn’t notice given, or not enough notice given," said Moore.

The city encouraged residents to continue to conserve energy to help reduce the time span for outages and apparently, residents complied and power outages didn't happen.

"Your efforts to conserve power reduced the strain on our equipment so that we did not have to implement any rolling power outages Friday, Saturday, or today," the city posted on its Facebook page Sunday night.

Residents were prepared for the possibility of outages.

At 1886 Bar & Grill, they had experienced the rolling blackout on Thursday and were ready just incase more happened.

“Friday when we were actually kind of prepared for it, no we didn't have any issues thankfully, we were really busy and I was kind of waiting for it It just never happened," said the manager, Dillion Mauboules.

They made light of the situation through a Facebook post and said they would have specials if the power went out.

"Saturday we were kind of preparing for it to go off between 3 and and 8 put some specials on Facebook that when the power does go out , we would have chips and queso for sale and then some beers for sales," said Mauboules.

Other than the heat, as to the specifics for the need for a possible planned outage, residents are still waiting for more information, while they come up with their own conclusions.

"I think that’s because it was such a small town and this year the town has really blown up that it’s not used to this much energy being used," said Mauboules.

2:34

Two North Texas communities prepare to lose power

ONCOR PLANNED OUTAGE FOR ARGYLE FRIDAY NIGHT

Oncor put residents in Argyle on notice that there's a planned power outage Friday night.

Oncor says it's increasing the capacity of equipment that serves the Town of Argyle and the outage is needed to "safely complete the upgrades."

Power will be disrupted starting at 11 p.m. Friday and power will remain out until upgrades are completed, which isn't expected to take more than five hours.

"Oncor has agreed to complete this project in the middle of the night to provide the least disruption to households and take advantage of lower temperatures," according to a statement on Argyle's website.

Oncor says the same homeowners who experienced an outage on Thursday from 1 a.m. to 9 a.m. will be affected again.

"Because of the extreme growth in our area, an autotransformer installed a year ago has already reached its maximum capacity. This upgrade will facilitate the installation of two larger autotransformers to meet the current needs while allowing room for expansion," Oncor said.

“This will hopefully help with any blackouts we might have in the future," said Argyle's Director of Public Works Robert White.

Oncor says while the outages aren't ideal if the equipment isn't replaced and fails, the power would be out for 18 hours for replacement and repairs.

SANGER, Texas - A high school in Sanger has opened a grocery store in its building to better serve families in its community.

Payment is with points rather than cash or credit.

It's part of the Texas Health Resources Community Impact Project, which hopes to secure at least five other school stores in North Texas.

What has started in Sanger ISD in Denton County has international interest. It’s the first of its kind in Texas and the nation, but not for long.

"The purpose of the design of the grocery store is to have families think of it as a grocery store and not a food pantry or a food closet or anything like that," explained Linda Tutt High School Principal Anthony Love.

But that is how the store inside Linda Tutt High operates, so students don’t have to wonder about where or if the next meal is coming.

The store is run by students. It’s a lesson for now and later.

Points are awarded to families based on the numbers in each household that can be redeemed at the store.

"It's really good to me that I'm able to provide food for people because I've been in that situation," said student Preston Wesbrook.

The high school is partnering for the food help with Texas Health Resources and First Refuge Ministries.

"We work in collaboration with Linda Tutt as well as Albertson’s, one of our big contributors, to make sure that we're able to allocate food," explained Izell Bennett with First Refuge Ministries.

The store's success soon will soon be a model for others.

Texas Health Resources is supporting the project through $594,000 in grants so far, looking to replicate the school store in other parts of North Texas.

"And Texas Health’s role in that would be helping to identify those committees and then also helping to raise funds for those communities," said Danielle Parker with Texas Health Resources.

"It has given me the opportunity to help the community in a way that I know matters," said student Brogan Sorensen. "And two, to give me skills that I will actually use in life."