28-05-2025
'Baseball cap-sized hail:" Near-record hailstones measured in Texas
Massive hailstones, one measured at nearly 6 inches in diameter, pummeled Texas over the holiday weekend, with storm chasers helping scientists on a mission to research big hail.
On Sunday in Afton, about 70 miles east of Lubbock, storm chaser Colt Forney found a hailstone that may have been more than 6 inches in diameter-about the size of a baseball cap.
ICECHIP, a project at Northern Illinois University funded by the National Science Foundation that aims to answer scientific questions about hail, measured a 5.47-inch hailstone in the same town. It was bigger than a baseball and a golf ball put together.
Not to be outdone by Sunday's discovery, a 5.87-inch hailstone was recorded at Menard, Texas-about 150 miles northwest of Austin-Monday by Landon Moeller from ICECHIP.
"Is this what they call the Finger of God? Massive hailstones today!! Everything really is bigger in Texas," Moeller posted on X.
Texas and U.S. hail records
The official hail record in Texas is 6.42 inches, set in Hondo on April 28, 2021. Larger stones were also measured last year but haven't made it into the record books yet. Even if the stone is clearly measured, it can take years for the records to be updated.
A hailstone that fell in Vivian, South Dakota, on July 23, 2010, holds the United States record for the largest size with a diameter of 8 inches.
How is hail measured?
Hail is classified by diameter, from pea-sized, one-quarter of an inch across, to softball-sized, 4 inches across. Hail an inch or larger in diameter is considered severe by the National Weather Service.
Beyond 4 inches, the stones are so unusual that there aren't officially terms to describe the size, although "grapefruit" is sometimes used to describe hail that is 4.5 inches in diameter, and "CD/DVD" penned to stones at 4.75 inches.
How does hail form?
When rising air in a thunderstorm, known as the updraft, lifts water droplets high into the atmosphere where temperatures are below freezing, layers of ice form on a frozen raindrop until the hailstone is heavy enough to fall to the ground.
May and June are the most typical months to see large hail, with 32 reports of hail larger than 4 inches in diameter submitted to the NOAA Storm Prediction Center in May 2024 and May 2025 so far.
