Along the roadside in the Texas Panhandle, a record-large hailstone was discovered at a whopping 7.1 inches in diameter
Initially mistaken as a discarded gallon of milk, a monster hailstone now holds a Texas state record!
Measured at 7.1 inches in diameter, this surpasses the previous record of about 6.5 inches set by a hailstone found in Hondo, TX in 2021.
This gargantuan hail was discovered lying in a roadside ditch by Val Castor, a stormchaser who was chasing a supercell thunderstorm across Swisher County, Texas, on June 2, 2024.
When Castor saw the mammoth hailstone, he suspected it could be a record. The problem? He had no way of accurately measuring it and no means of preserving the quickly melting stone. Fortunately he had a camera and ingenuity on his side, which he describes below. Castor :
“As I was chasing this tornadic supercell, I started to notice large hail on the ground the size of softballs and some still falling sporadically. I was thinking about stopping and getting a quick picture of a few softballs when I noticed what look [sic] like a gallon jug of milk in the ditch. As I drove past it, I was thinking no way was this a hailstone, but I turned around and went back. As I got closer to it, it became apparent that it was indeed a very large hail stone. When I went to pick it up, it was about half buried in the mud. I didn’t have a tape measure and about the only thing I had to compare it to was an empty monster energy drink can. It was about the size and shape of a good size pineapple. I didn’t have an ice chest or any way to keep it so sadly, I had to throw it back. Catch and release I guess…lol. I’ve seen lots of large hail in my 35 years of storm chasing, but this was by far the largest.”
Measurements of the Hailstone
After Castor and his fellow stormchasers inspected the hailstone and took a multitude of photographs for evidence, they passed them off to the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS).
In the past, IBHS has measured hail size through detailed laser-based measurements of recovered hailstones, or indirectly through photogrammetric analysis (photogrammetry is the science of creating accurate 3D models or measurements from 2D photos). As such, three estimates of the size of the hailstone exist:
- The original 7.25” estimate from the storm chasers;
- The IBHS AI-based estimate of 7.06";
- The photogrammetric estimate of 7.16”.
Since there was no definitive measurement, the best conservative estimate of the hailstone diameter was determined to be 7.10 inches.
Long after the storm, independent analyses of the photographic evidence indicated that the hailstone was slightly more than 7 inches in diameter, easily exceeding the existing Texas state record of 6.46 inches. Other hailstone metrics, such as diameter, volume and mass could not be estimated from the photographs.
Due to the photographic evidence of the hailstone next to objects for reference, and other reliable eyewitness accounts of hailstones observed during the event, the State Climate Extremes Committee (SCEC) voted unanimously that the Vigo Park hailstone be accepted as the new largest diameter hailstone in the state of Texas, with a value of 7.1". More details below:
- Location: Three miles west-northwest of Vigo Park, Swisher County, Texas
- Date: June 2, 2024
- Maximum Diameter: 7.1 inches
This SCEC was convened to document and evaluate the potential validity of this record. It was composed of members representing five institutions: the National Weather Service (NWS) Weather Forecast Office (WFO) in Lubbock, the NWS Southern Region Headquarters, the Office of the State Climatologist of Texas, the Southern Regional Climate Center, and the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information.
