'Gorilla Hail' Breaks 74-year Record in One State

A massive hailstone that fell during severe storms raging through Oklahoma on Thursday night broke a 74-year-old record in the state.

Severe thunderstorms ravaged the Plains states and the Midwest on Thursday night. A tornado watch spread across at least three states at once, and the storms produced a significant tornado in Logan County, Ohio, near Indian Lake, around 70 miles northwest of Columbus. Tornados also were identified in Indiana and Kentucky on Thursday and in Kansas on Wednesday. In Oklahoma, the slew of storms produced massive hailstones, one of which surpassed 5 inches in diameter.

"This 5.25 inch diameter hail stone fell in SE Ada OK on 3/14/24," the National Weather Service (NWS) office in Norman, Oklahoma posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Friday. "It's a new record for the largest stone reported in Pontotoc County since 1950 (old record was 3.25" near Francis 3/26/2017). It's also the largest in OK since 5/23/2011, when 6" hail fell in Caddo County."

Extreme storm chaser Reed Timmer reposted the photo on X and called it "gorilla hail", a term Timmer coined to describe hailstones that are larger than usual.

NWS meteorologist Ryan Bunker told Newsweek that a resident in Ada, Oklahoma, found the hail and decided to put it in the freezer overnight before sending pictures to the NWS on Friday.

Bunker said the NWS is still gathering reports from the storm, but that the office hasn't heard of any substantial damage caused by the hail.

The uncommonly large hailstone came after the NWS office in Norman warned of damaging hail on Thursday night. Hail is not uncommon for Oklahoma in the late winter and early spring, Bunker said, although he added that the conditions had to be just right to form hail of that size.

The NWS also issued a weather alert on Thursday night for central, southern and southeastern Kansas due to the risk of the "severe" storms creating dime- to quarter-sized hail, along with winds gusting up to 60 miles an hour, Newsweek previously reported.

The NWS says that hail an inch or greater in diameter is considered severe. A quarter is roughly an inch across, while a baseball has a diameter of up to 2.94 inches. Although the massive hailstone that fell in Oklahoma was roughly double the size of a baseball, there were accounts of baseball-sized hail falling in the region as well.

Additional thunderstorms could occur throughout Friday in the Norman region, the NWS Norman office posted, but none of the storms are expected to be severe.