Storm in Texas Produces Huge DVD-Sized Hailstone

Sunday afternoon, May 25, 2025, storms began to significantly intensify in Texas. The Storm Prediction Center shows that storm reports started coming in with large hail reports by the middle of the afternoon. Within a few hours, the reports of hail had greatly intensified including some the size of DVDs and larger.

How Big is a Hailstone That is Referred to as DVD-Size?

The largest hail report I could find was for a 6 inch hailstone which is larger than a DVD. I saw Doug Warner on Facebook share a picture of the 6 inch hailstone that fell near Afton, Texas. There were many hailstones larger than softballs that were found on the side of the road, which likely had melted some before being found.

How Can a Hailstone Become So Big?

For a large hailstone to form, a thunderstorm must have a strong updraft which is capable of lifting an ice pellet back up into the storm to repeatedly accumulate more and more layers of ice. The wind speeds required in the updraft must be extremely high for a DVD sized hailstone to form. I found a helpful graphic on Fox Weather showing that for a grapefruit sized hailstone to form, wind speeds in the updraft would need to be 103 mph. That's for a 4.5 inch chunk of hail. For a 6 inch hailstone to form, wind speeds would likely be at least 112 mph.

How Large is the Largest Hailstone on Record?

According to the National Severe Storms Laboratory, the largest hailstone ever recorded in the United States was 8 inches in diameter. This monster chunk of ice fell in Vivian, South Dakota on June 23, 2010 and it weighed almost 2 pounds!

Hail doesn't have to be nearly that large to do some major damage and being hit by hail of any size can cause some serious injury to people and animals. That's why it is so important to take cover when a warning is issued for a severe storm especially when you have storms like the ones that just impacted Texas head your direction.