Texas: Sunday's 7" Hail Threatens State Record
Powerful storms tore through the panhandle of Texas on Sunday. A few of these supercells spun up a few brief tornadoes alongside MASSIVE hailstones over 6" in diameter. The largest recorded hailstone in Texas was a 6.4" stone that fell in Hondo, west of San Antonio, on April 28, 2021. In May a 6" hailstone fell in Johnson City, TX (west of Austin).
Sunday night's 6" hail fell over Caprock Canyons State Park, about an hour and a half drive from Amarillo. Depending on the verification, the National Weather Service office in Lubbock might have a new state record on their hands. The hailstone will need to be inspected and verified before anything official is announced. This is a look at some of the hail that fell back in 2021, when the previous record was made.
Extreme amounts of instability helped fuel the storms even more as the afternoon progressed. Thunderstorms will feed on this energy and in turn, draw in more air. That air is called the updraft of a storm.
When you have a strong enough updraft, you can loft raindrops high enough to freeze - forming hail. If our updraft speed is strong enough (stronger than 80 mph) hail stones will continue to be lifted into the cloud, growing before their weight becomes stronger than the updraft and they fall to the ground.
