Texas Videos Show Golf Ball-Sized Hail Stones Cracking Windows

Enormous chunks of ice have been falling from the sky during a hailstorm over Texas, slamming into cars and buildings at high speeds.

Videos of the powerful deluge on May 19 were uploaded to social media by local residents, showing the sheer scale of the golf ball-sized ice falling at high speeds.

"This is Texas y'all. I'm still shaking," wrote Twitter user @JonathanBodnar, alongside a video of the hail cracking his car windshield.

"Driving down the highway when a pop up storm (wasn't even raining) comes out of nowhere and all the cars stop under the bridge leaving everyone else out on the highway," he tweeted. "Literal baseball hail destroying my car while I'm inside."

Another user, @ChristieCars, tweeted a video from Allen, Texas, showing the hail falling violently into a swimming pool, while the @Earth42morrow account tweeted a video credited to Molly Vernon displaying the large, heavy hailstones crashing to Earth outside of a home.

Hailstones—chunks of ice—are formed inside thunderstorm clouds, eventually falling to the ground at high speeds during a storm. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming experience more hailstorms than other states, with an average of 7 to 9 hail days per year at the intersection between the three.

Hailstones grow within thunderclouds with powerful updrafts, keeping the chunks of ice aloft.

"Hail forms when drops of water are taken up and down through a cloud by updraughts and downdraughts," a spokesperson from the U.K.'s Meteorological Office told Newsweek.

"When these droplets get to the top of the cloud, they can freeze and when the thunderclouds are very big, these hail stones can be retained for a longer time, getting larger as more ice gets coated on. When the hail is so big that the cloud can't retain it, then it falls to the ground. Some melt before it reaches the ground, but others retain their shape and size and can have impacts at the surface."

A variety of factors can lead to hailstones growing to enormous sizes: The largest hailstone ever recorded fell in Vivian, South Dakota, on June 23, 2010, measuring 8 inches across and weighing just under 2 pounds.

Becky Adams-Selin, a senior manager scientist at Atmospheric and Environmental Research, told Newsweek: "The question of how hailstones can get so big is a complex one that we don't fully understand yet."

"We know that a storm must have a lot of supercooled liquid water aloft—that's water that is still liquid but at a temperature below freezing. The storm also must have an updraft that is strong enough to keep the hailstone aloft in that region of supercooled liquid water so it can grow, but it can't be too strong or else the hailstone will shoot out the top of the storm. A more moderate updraft that is wide gives hailstones the most opportunity to stay aloft and grow big."

"However, there are other factors going on inside a storm that can help a hailstone stay aloft in less favorable situations and still grow big, and those are the pieces we don't understand yet," she said.

"Small changes to our models of how hailstones grow—things like how quickly the water freezes when it is collected by the hailstone, if it tumbles as it falls, having a more realistic, 'spiky' shape instead of a being a round sphere—result in big changes in how the hailstones move through the storm and grow. There's a lot of research to be done yet, and we need more observations of these processes!"

Larger hailstones fall to Earth much faster than smaller ones: NOAA estimates that 1-inch hailstones travel between 9 and 25 miles per hour, while those closer to 2 inches across fall at around 40 mph. These speeds can cause huge damage to cars, buildings, and even people, having killed people in the past upon impact.

"Hailstones can do a lot of damage, but not always in the ways you would think," Adams-Selin said. "Obviously large golf ball-sized hailstones will damage roofs and vehicles quite a bit. However, sometimes storms produce lots of small hail, and that can also damage a roof by making it weaker so those golf ball-sized stones will damage it even further. Lots of small hail, especially if it is windblown, can cause more damage to crops than golf ball-sized stones. When larger hailstones are produced by a storm, there tend to be fewer of them, so some of the crops can still survive."

Similar scenes were seen across Texas in March, when stones the size of iPhones smashed several car windows, and on a highway in Alberta in Canada, damaging 34 vehicles.

"In terms of protecting yourself from hail, these are normally as part of a thunderstorm, so it's important to be prepared ahead of the weather and take time to store outside furniture away so winds can't get to it. Park cars in a garage, if available, and check that your drains and gutters are clear of debris so they can handle any associated rain, as well as the melting of hail stones," the Met Office spokesperson said.

With the effects of climate change, meteorologists fear that changes to the atmosphere and storm systems may result in larger hailstones becoming more common.

"Warmer temperatures will allow more water to be stored in the air, making storms stronger with more supercooled liquid water aloft," Adams-Selin said. "However, if more, or larger, hailstones are formed, warmer temperatures also might mean they would melt before they hit the ground. We're also not sure yet how the updrafts in the storm might change."

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