{"id":275890,"date":"2026-05-02T11:05:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T11:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/275890\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T11:05:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T11:05:19","slug":"texas-state-record-broken-after-experts-certify-massive-7-1-inch-hailstone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/275890\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas state record broken after experts certify massive 7.1-inch hailstone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">TEXAS (KLTV\/KTRE) &#8211; NOAA\u2019s State Climate Extremes Committee has confirmed a hailstone produced by a thunderstorm near Vigo Park, Texas in 2024, was the largest ever recorded in the state. A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncei.noaa.gov\/monitoring-content\/extremes\/scec\/reports\/20260427-Texas-Hailstone.pdf\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.ncei.noaa.gov\/monitoring-content\/extremes\/scec\/reports\/20260427-Texas-Hailstone.pdf\">report<\/a> published earlier this week records the hailstone\u2019s diameter as 7.1 inches, breaking the previous Texas record of 6.464 inches.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The hailstone was discovered by Oklahoma storm chaser Val Castor on June 2, 2024, 3 miles west-northwest of Vigo Park, Swisher County, Texas. Castor told the National Weather Service in Lubbock that he saw what he thought was \u201ca gallon jug of milk in the ditch\u201d before turning around to get another look. \u201cAs I got closer to it, it became apparent that it was indeed a very large hail stone&#8230; 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,\u201d Castor said. He estimated the hailstone\u2019s diameter to be 7.25 inches.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure-img img-fluid mx-auto d-block\" alt=\"Hailstone in hand\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/KTR7SYCPLRF4LFUIFYHSGLCXSY.jpg\" width=\"980\" height=\"1225\" \/>Hailstone in hand(Val Castor)<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Images of the hailstone were shared with the National Weather Service and the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS). The IBHS, using an AI-based technique, estimated the diameter of the hailstone as 7.06 inches. Additionally, Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon, Texas state climatologist and director of the Southern Regional Climate Center, completed a photogrammetric analysis that estimated the hailstone\u2019s diameter to be 7.16 inches (plus or minus 0.22 inches).<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The recommendation of the State Climate Extremes Committee is \u201cthat the Vigo Park hailstone be accepted as the new largest diameter hailstone in the state of Texas, with a value of 7.1\u2033.\u201d The report also states \u201cGiven the uncertainties in all three estimates and proceeding conservatively, we regard the best estimate of the hailstone diameter to be 7.1\u2033, with the precision of the estimate indicative of the uncertainty in the estimate. All estimates are well in excess of the current record hailstone diameter for Texas, 6.464\u2033.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure-img img-fluid mx-auto d-block\" alt=\"Hailstone next to Monster can\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/ATIFTIZ7OFHKHA7M5AIQZLRF3U.png\" width=\"980\" height=\"754\" \/>Hailstone next to Monster can(Val Castor)<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 KLTV\/KTRE. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEXAS (KLTV\/KTRE) &#8211; NOAA\u2019s State Climate Extremes Committee has confirmed a hailstone produced by a thunderstorm near Vigo&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[12274,102101,3659,2384,27,29,28,11454,172],"class_list":["post-275890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-hail","tag-hailstone","tag-record","tag-storms","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-thunderstorms","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275890","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=275890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}