{"id":273445,"date":"2026-04-30T20:35:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T20:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/273445\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T20:35:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T20:35:12","slug":"texas-panhandle-hailstone-declared-record-nearly-2-years-after-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/273445\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas panhandle hailstone declared record nearly 2 years after storm"},"content":{"rendered":"

VIGO PARK, Texas (KVII) \u2014 The Texas panhandle now holds the state record for the largest hailstone<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nearly two years after it fell in Swisher County<\/a>, a hailstone, which was estimated to be 7.1-inches in diameter, was confirmed as the new record holder by the State Climate Extremes Committee (SCEC)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Val Castor, a veteran storm chaser, was chasing a supercell thunderstorm on June 2, 2024 when he found the monster hailstone three miles west-northwest of Vigo Park<\/a>. But Castor almost missed it.<\/p>\n

“I noticed what look [sic] like a gallon jug of milk in the ditch,” said Castor. “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.”<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Castor didn’t have any way to confirm the size, or even preserve the hail.<\/p>\n

“I didn\u2019t have a tape measure and about the only thing I had to compare it to was an empty Monster energy drink can. I didn\u2019t have an ice chest or any way to keep it so sadly, I had to throw it back. Catch and release I guess,” said Castor.<\/p>\n

It’s similar to having the “state record” bass in the livewell of your boat. Until it’s been weighed on a certified scale, it’s only a fish tale.<\/p>\n

Castor and his fellow storm chasers estimated the hailstone to be 7.25-inches. They took a bunch of pictures for evidence and then sent them to the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

IBHS has measured hail size through detailed laser-based measurements of recovered hailstones, or through something called photogrammetry<\/a> – approximating a 3D structure using two dimensional images.<\/p>\n

Storm chasers estimate: 7.25-inchesPhotogrammetric estimate: 7.16-inchesIBHS AI-based estimate: 7.06-inches\"This<\/p>\n

This hail stone fell near Vigo Park, Texas on June 2, 2024. It was finally confirmed to be 7.1-inches in diameter, making it a new state record. (Val Castor\/NOAA)<\/p>\n

Since there was no definitive measurement, the best conservative estimate of the hailstone’s diameter was determined to be 7.10-inches.<\/p>\n

The State Climate Extremes Committee voted unanimously that the Vigo Park hailstone be accepted as the new largest hailstone in the state of Texas at 7.1-inches in diameter<\/p>\n

“I\u2019ve seen lots of large hail in my 35 years of storm chasing, but this was by far the largest,” said Castor.<\/p>\n

The previous record was a 6.416-inch hail stone that fell in Hondo, west of San Antonio, on April 28, 2021.<\/p>\n

The heaviest hail stone on record in the United States had a reported diameter of 11 inches and weighed nearly two pounds. It was discovered near Vivian, South Dakota, in July 2010, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"VIGO PARK, Texas (KVII) \u2014 The Texas panhandle now holds the state record for the largest hailstone. Nearly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-273445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}