Massive melon-size hail could be a Texas record (2024)

The stone was recovered by Val and Amy Castor, storm chasers with News 9 in Oklahoma City. The couple found the stone about 10 miles northwest of the Mackenzie Reservoir in rural Swisher County, Tex., three miles north-northwest of Vigo Park.

They snapped photos of a spiky hailstone next to a can of Monster Energy, which, if it’s a standard can, is 6.5 inches tall. Val Castor later posted on Facebook that the stone “conservatively” measured at least seven inches long. If the stone closes in on seven-inch territory, it could qualify as a state record.

The record in Texas is a hailstone measuring 6.4 inches that was recovered near Hondo, west of San Antonio, on April 28, 2021. It doesn’t come close to the eight-inch bowling-ball-size hailstone that crashed to the ground near Vivian, S.D., on July 23, 2010. It weighed nearly two pounds.

The National Weather Service in Lubbock is investigating the newly discovered hailstone.

It has been a banner week for hail in West Texas. The National Weather Service issued a first-of-its-kind severe thunderstorm warning listing “DVD-sized hail” as a threat last Tuesday as stones between 4.5 and five inches across fell near the small town of Pettit, west of Lubbock.

Sunday’s hail was even larger, and is in an elite category of “gargantuan” hail. That’s an actual term that scientists use to describe any hail larger than six inches in diameter.

The production of giant hail requires exceptional thunderstorm updrafts that can suspend a large hailstone as more layers of ice accrete on it. Once a stone grows too heavy for an updraft to keep it in midair, it plummets to Earth at speeds often topping 100 mph.

In the case of Sunday’s hail, copious instability, or storm fuel, led to explosive thunderstorm development. Warm, moist air probably ascended at speeds in excess of 110 mph for a time, lofting stones that weighed between one-half and three-quarters of a pound.

The storm that fueled that hail also produced a picturesque tornado northwest of Silverton in the southern Texas Panhandle. A second twister briefly accompanied it.

Steve Thompson, a meteorologist with the Oklahoma Mesonet, was storm-chasing and happened to capture that storm from a wide perspective near Palo Duro Canyon.

“I came off the canyon yesterday and I was jaw to the floor,” he wrote in a Facebook message. “I figured it would take a bit for [the rotation] to wrap up and produce a tornado, so I hung back to the east a bit to keep the structure in view.”

The storm had derived some rotation from a remnant outflow boundary, or leading edge of cool air exhaust left behind by the previous day’s storms. But changing winds with height helped sculpt the storm into a spinning top, as evidenced by the barber pole updraft visible in Thompson’s photo.

“Just incredible storm structure and tornado combination,” he wrote. “This by far is my favorite photo.”

Sunday’s storms also produced a tornado south of Fort Stockton, Tex.; severe winds in western Nebraska; and another tornado west of Faith, S.D. A few tornadoes and landspouts — tornadoes that begin as whirls of wind near the ground that get stretched vertically by thunderstorm updrafts — also were reported in eastern North Dakota.

In total, more than 150 instances of severe weather were reported.

Additional strong to severe thunderstorms, mainly squall lines with strong wind, are expected across northeast Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and western Louisiana on Monday. A tornado or two can’t be ruled out along the western Oklahoma-Texas border, once again due to spin along a leftover thunderstorm exhaust boundary.

More storms are likely for Kansas City, Omaha and Des Moines on Tuesday before quieter weather builds across the Lower 48 into Wednesday.