It’s time for one of nature’s biggest blockbuster hits: Tornado Season. On Thursday, the bulk of the Midwestern and Southwestern states experienced high winds and giant balls of hail in one day, and eight tornadoes touched down in Texas, Missouri and Illinois within an three-hour period.

According to NBC News, four tornadoes hit Texas on Thursday evening between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m., Missouri began to experience their three touchdowns before the sun came up on Thursday morning while one tornado also hit the southern tip of Illinois that same day.

Although this sounds horrendous, the damage could have been much worse. Four people were reported injured, while hundreds of buildings did sustain various degrees of damage. A Texas farmhouse was ripped off of its foundation Wizard of Oz-style and many cars felt their first taste of tree bark. The hail storm made of quarter-sized to baseball-sized balls of ice shattered windows in Kansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas.

Tennis ball sized hail smashes cars in Denton, Texas; witnesses say it "sounded like gunfire” – @wfaasebastian pic.twitter.com/QmA5wBKErz

— BuzzFeed Storm (@BuzzFeedStorm) April 3, 2014

High winds are expected throughout Friday into Saturday, but the chance of more tornadoes forming this weekend are low. There has been heavy rainfall and storms before and during the tornadoes, and it is likely that many states will experience that over the weekend. Missouri has already experienced some flash flooding and washed out water mains and culverts as well as some forced home evacuations. Meteorologists suspect that there may have been more tornadoes than the eight reported. While the winds and hail were no doubt nerve-racking and are surely causing a hassle with the citizen’s insurance policies, we are all grateful that no casualties have been reported and the injuries have been kept to a minimum. This will hopefully be the bulk of tornado season damage this year.

Image via Wikimedia Commons