A hailstone the size of a pineapple that slammed into the Texas Panhandle during a June 2024 supercell thunderstorm has been officially certified as the largest in Texas history. NOAA's State Climate Extremes Committee voted unanimously to recognize the stone at 7.1 inches in diameter, FOX Weather reported, shattering the previous state record of 6.5 inches.
The stone fell near Vigo Park on June 2, 2024, during a storm that also hurled softball-sized ice across the region. Storm tracker Val Castor found it lying in a roadside ditch, and almost drove past it.
The confirmation matters beyond bragging rights. Texas sits at the center of the nation's most active hail corridor, and the Panhandle regularly absorbs the worst of it. A 7.1-inch hailstone is not a curiosity. It is a projectile capable of punching through roofs, destroying vehicles, and injuring anyone caught in the open. For the communities and property owners who live under these skies, the record is a reminder that severe weather in this part of the country demands serious preparation, not just seasonal forecasts.
Val Castor, a veteran storm tracker, was chasing the tornadic supercell when he began noticing oversized hail scattered on the ground. As he described it:
"As I was chasing this tornadic supercell, I started to notice large hail on the ground the size of softballs, with some still falling sporadically."
Then he spotted something far larger in a ditch beside the road. His first instinct was to dismiss it. Castor said he initially thought the object was a discarded gallon of milk. But he turned around for a second look.
"As I drove past it, I thought there was no way this was a hailstone, but I turned around and went back. As I got closer, it became clear that it was indeed a very large hailstone."
Castor estimated the stone at roughly 7.25 inches in diameter. He shared images with both the National Weather Service and the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety. That set the formal verification process in motion.
The same storm cracked Castor's windshield with baseball-sized hail, the Associated Press reported, and produced multiple large stones across the area. Castor, who has chased storms for more than three decades, called it the biggest hail he had ever seen.
Because Castor found the stone in the field rather than catching it as it fell, no one could place it on a scale or measure it with calipers in real time. The committee relied on photographic evidence, images of the hailstone next to objects of known size, along with eyewitness accounts.
The Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety ran its own analysis. Using an AI-based measurement technique, IBHS estimated the stone at about 7.06 inches. A more detailed photogrammetric analysis put it at 7.16 inches. The committee settled on the most conservative estimate: 7.10 inches in diameter.
That conservative approach is worth noting. The SCEC did not round up or accept the highest figure. It chose the floor. Even so, the stone cleared the old Texas record of 6.5 inches by more than half an inch, a wide margin in a field where fractions of an inch separate ordinary large hail from the extraordinary.
The committee's vote was unanimous. Based on the photographic evidence and reliable eyewitness accounts, every member agreed the Vigo Park hailstone deserved certification at 7.1 inches.
The Panhandle's reputation for extreme hailstorms is well earned. In a separate incident, a slow-moving thunderstorm dumped golf-ball- and ping-pong-ball-sized hail over Potter County near Amarillo so heavily that it piled into drifts up to four feet deep, stranding motorists and closing a highway for hours.
That kind of accumulation turns roads into impassable mud-and-ice fields. Emergency crews had to dig vehicles out. The National Weather Service noted that 21 hours after the storm, the largest remaining stones were still about the size of ping-pong balls.
The region's vulnerability is not limited to hail. Multi-day severe weather outbreaks regularly target the Texas Plains with tornadoes, damaging winds, and hail in rapid succession, stacking losses for homeowners and insurers alike.
And the destruction extends well beyond Texas. This spring and summer, violent storms have hammered communities across the central United States with increasing frequency.
Tornadoes tore through Oklahoma, leaving Enid and Vance Air Force Base in ruins during one particularly devastating outbreak.
Farther north, severe storms triggered flash flooding and water rescues. Kansas City endured dangerous flooding as the same active weather pattern pounded the Midwest.
Even deadly lightning strikes have marked the season. A man was killed by lightning in a Waukesha parking lot as violent storms battered Wisconsin and surrounding states.
At 7.1 inches, the Texas record remains short of the all-time U.S. mark. The largest hailstone ever documented in the country fell on July 23, 2010, in Vivian, South Dakota. That stone measured 8 inches in diameter and 18.62 inches in circumference.
The gap between 7.1 and 8 inches may sound small. It isn't. Hailstone mass increases dramatically with diameter. The Vivian stone was a freak of atmospheric physics, and the Vigo Park stone is the closest any Texas hailstone has come to challenging it.
The previous Texas record of 6.5 inches had stood as the benchmark. Before the Vigo Park event, AP News noted that some records listed a 6.4-inch stone from Hondo in 2021 as the state mark. Either way, the new certified measurement blew past both figures.
For residents of the Texas Panhandle, a record-setting hailstone is not a novelty. It is a property-insurance claim, a damaged roof, a shattered windshield, and a reminder that the next supercell could be worse.
Hail damage costs American property owners billions of dollars every year. The Plains bear a disproportionate share of that burden. When a single storm can drop ice the size of a pineapple from the sky, the stakes for homeowners, ranchers, and local governments are not abstract. They show up in repair bills, premium hikes, and the slow grind of rebuilding after every major event.
Severe weather has also killed residents and knocked out power for tens of thousands across the Southeast this year, underscoring how broadly the threat reaches.
NOAA's formal certification of the Vigo Park hailstone closes the measurement debate. The committee used conservative methods, accepted the lowest credible estimate, and still arrived at a number that rewrites the Texas record book.
Nature doesn't care about records. But the people rebuilding underneath these storms deserve leaders and institutions that take the threat as seriously as the weather itself demands.
