A powerful storm that hit Villa Carlos Paz in Argentina two years ago produced the world's largest hailstone, bigger than a volleyball, a US research team reported.
A hailstone is a lump of ice that has a round or irregular shape, ranging in diameter from a few millimeters to several centimeters. The researchers who examined the incident in 2018 found that at least one hailstone measured up to 9.3 inches in diameter, potentially setting a new world record.
The current record belongs to a hailstone that measured 8 inches across, or about the size of a volleyball, that fell near Vivian, South Dakota. But, according to a recent study by researchers from the Penn State University, the hail that fell in Argentina is bigger. The study was published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
In a report published Thursday on the university's website, Matthew Kumjian, associate professor at Penn State University said: "It's incredible. This is the extreme upper end of what you'd expect from hail."
Scientists suggest that hailstones bigger than six inches should be classified as gargantuan hail. Being aware of such rare events could help form a better understanding of dangerous storms.
"Anything larger than about a quarter of that in size can start putting dents into your car – in some rare cases, six-inch hail has actually gone through roofs and multiple floors in houses. We'd like to help mitigate the impacts on life and property, to help anticipate these kinds of events," said Kumjian.
Residents of Villa Carlos Paz had shared pictures and videos showing the falling hailstones on social media. The researchers followed their accounts a year after the storm, interviewed witnesses, and visited the damaged sites. Based on the collected photo data and the analysis of radar observations, along with the measurements of photogrammetry and video evidence, the scientists estimated that the hailstone may have set a new world record.
"Such a well-observed case is an important step forward in understanding environments and storms that produce gargantuan hail, and ultimately how to anticipate and detect such extreme events, especially that predicting the size of the stones remains challenging for scientists," concluded Kumjian.
