June 22, 2004, 11:53PM

BASEBALL HAIL SIZE POUNDS TEXAS

As Houston residents brace for more rain today, the Texas Panhandle is recovering from storms that brought winds of more than 70 mph and hail the size of baseballs.

Damage estimates from Monday night's storms had not been finalized Tuesday but were expected to total millions of dollars, said Sandra Ray, spokeswoman for Southwestern Insurance Information Service.

"It looks like the damage that we have here is to the windows," said Mary Barlow, a spokeswoman for Baptist St. Anthony's Hospital in Amarillo. "We know that it's going to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Locally, Tuesday's heavy downfall, combined with already saturated ground soil, sparked a National Weather Service flood warning until 6 p.m. today for Harris County and the surrounding area.

The thunderstorms that moved through the Houston area were the result of an upper-level disturbance from the west colliding with a cold front from the north, forecasters said. No injuries were reported.

"It looks like for the next several days we're going to have a good chance for rain," said Robert Van Hoven with the National Weather Service's League City office.

Rainfall in the Houston area has been more than 15 inches above normal since Jan. 1.

By Tuesday, local forecasters registered almost 38 inches of rain for the year, compared with the average amount of about 23 inches.

"We may even get additional heavy rain again on Wednesday night and Thursday," Van Hoven said.

In Amarillo, storms smashed almost all windows on one side of the six-story Baptist St. Anthony's Hospital and staff moved patients to the interior of the building.

Barlow said Tuesday that about 100 rooms in the 410-bed hospital were affected. One patient sustained non-life-threatening injuries.

She said the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit was hit and about a dozen babies had to be moved to the regular newborn nursery. By midmorning Tuesday, though, she said smashed windows had been boarded up, debris had been cleared and the infants had been returned to their regular unit.

Hail, some the size of a baseball, damaged homes and vehicles in the area. Windows were smashed on cars on some dealers' lots, and a Wal-Mart Super Center closed because its skylights were shattered.

Heavy rain flooded some underpasses and rural roads, and Hartley County Sheriff Franky Scott said water was up to 4 feet deep in some areas for a time Monday night.

Storms also developed in other parts of West and Southwest Texas, knocking down trees and sweeping vehicles off the road. No injuries were reported.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.