A wild day of stormy weather produced two tornadoes in and around Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on April 10. (Rebecca Mullen)

After destructive hail, flash flooding and tornadoes whipped across the Sunshine State on Monday, Florida residents may have felt as if they lived in Tornado Alley.

The workweek started with a bang — literally — in St. Augustine, a beachside community about 30 miles southeast of Jacksonville. Just after 8 a.m., the National Weather Service in Jacksonville issued a severe thunderstorm warning for parts of St. Johns and Clay counties, cautioning commuters of “quarter-size hail.”

But then came an update — forecasters quickly upped the ante, warning of hail the size of golf balls. Some in that neck of the woods had never seen hail. You can imagine their surprise minutes later when jagged chunks of ice came launching out of the sky. But these projectiles weren’t the size of golf balls — they were wider than a baseball.

The largest diameter officially measured was three inches — surprisingly, not a record for the warmest state in the Lower 48. In March 1996, hail as large as grapefruits wreaked havoc in Lake Wales, Fla., and caused an estimated $24 million in damage, most of which was to, coincidentally, groves of grapefruits. Evidently the hail decided to pick on someone its own size.

Getting hail this large in Florida is an impressive feat. Lots of ingredients have to come together just right for whoppers of this size. There has to be a storm, obviously. And it has to be a little bit tilted. If it’s not, all the rain and cool air will choke off any air trying to rise. The storm will die and collapse. That is why storms in Florida can be intense but don’t last too long — gentle winds aloft prevent this tipping and cut down on a storm’s longevity.

Likewise, to form hailstones, there has to be cold air. This cold air is found upstairs, several miles or more up in the atmosphere. Because Florida is so warm and humid, the cold temperatures are considerably higher than elsewhere in the country. That is why even though Florida has more thunderstorms than Oklahoma, Oklahoma sees 10 times as much hail.

The storms responsible for the wacky weather fired ahead of a cold front dropping in from the northwest. Temperatures ahead of the cold front soared to 90 degrees in South Florida. Tuesday was the first time Miami hit 90 degrees for two consecutive days so early in the year since 2008. The heat played a significant role in the severity of the storms.

The strongest storms ahead of the cold front were isolated enough that they were able to gobble up moisture without competing with neighboring cells. That allowed them to grow intense quickly.

Storms along the east coast of Florida interacted with westerly winds aloft ahead of the cold front and a sea breeze right near the coast and started to rotate a little bit. This led to at least three tornadoes touching down across South Florida.

Fort Lauderdale found itself beneath a “mothership supercell” around 3:30 p.m. The slow-moving storm parked itself over the downtown area. On the east side, a “tail cloud” fed moisture into the storm, wrapping in fuel to feed the beast of a tempest. On the west side, cold air surging in behind the storm brought strong winds — over 65 mph — to the surface. This is known as the rear flank downdraft. Between these two air masses, a mesocyclone formed. That is the rotating part of the storm. It became apparent that this rotation could reach the ground, and a tornado warning was issued.

At least two weak tornadoes — both EF-0s, with winds below 85 mph — were confirmed by the National Weather Service in Miami on Monday evening. One of these spun up along the northern runway of Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood airport, terrifying travelers trapped in their planes. The other damaged construction equipment downtown, snaking between skyscrapers and whirling debris into the air. The storm weakened as it exited the coast, dropping intermittent waterspouts over open water.

The Weather Service continues its storm assessment on Wednesday.