Sunday severe weather outbreak may produce DVD size hail
Forecasters expect a severe weather outbreak on the U.S. Plains that could produce hailstones as large as 12-13 cm in diameter
A dangerous severe weather outbreak expected on the southern U.S. Plains on Sunday could produce hailstones up to 12-13 cm in diameter.
For scale, that’s roughly the size of a CD or DVD—larger than any hailstone ever recorded in Canada.
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A major severe weather outbreak on Sunday
The U.S. Storm Prediction Center (SPC) expects a significant outbreak of severe thunderstorms across much of Texas and Oklahoma on Sunday, with some areas under a moderate—level 4 out of 5—risk for severe weather.
Sunday’s highest severe weather risk areas cover more than 11.5 million residents, including the Texas cities of Dallas and Fort Worth, as well as the Oklahoma City metro area.
Extremely high levels of instability will fuel the rapid development of supercell thunderstorms in Texas and Oklahoma. This is an unusually intense setup, even for this neck of the woods.
Forecasters with the SPC expect these storms could produce giant hailstones up to 12-13 cm (5 inches) in diameter. That’s larger than a softball or a grapefruit—and even a little larger than the size of a DVD!
As the afternoon wears on, these storms should congeal into a squall line that’ll race east-southeast through southern Oklahoma and northern Texas. The SPC says that this squall line could produce destructive wind gusts as strong as 130-160 km/h (80-100 mph).
Sunday’s largest hail could exceed Canada’s record
How big can hail get?
Between 2015 and 2024, the SPC received an average of 8,700 reports of large hail across the U.S. each year. The average size of those hailstones was about 3.2 cm (1.25 inches) in diameter—just a tad larger than a toonie.
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But hail can grow much bigger. The world’s largest hailstone fell in Vivian, South Dakota, on July 23, 2010. That historic hailstone measured 20.32 cm (8 inches) in diameter and weighed 0.88 kg (1.94 lb).
Canada’s largest hailstone on record fell near Innisfail, Alta., on Aug. 1, 2022. The stone measured 12.3 cm (4.84 inches) in diameter. If Sunday’s storms live up to their full potential, the largest hail that falls in Texas and Oklahoma could outrank Canada’s all-time hail record.
Header image created using imagery from Canva.