Giant Hail In Argentina Not A World Record, But Scary Big Nonetheless

This hailstone, more than seven inches in diameter,
landed in Argentina last week. It's probably the record largest
for the Southern Hemisphere, but not quite a world record. 

On February 8,  a severe thunderstorm in Argentina dropped some amazingly large hailstones.

The stones, it turned out, fell a little short of the world record for largest hail ever observed.

On July 23, 2010, a hailstone eight inches in diameter, 18.625 inches in circumference and 1.9375 pounds landed on the small town of Vivian, South Dakota. That's still the world record holder.

The hail stone in Argentina had a 7.1 inch diameter, which is very likely a record for the Southern Hemisphere.

According to the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang, the hailstorm started as no big deal in Cordoba, Argentina. The hailstones were tiny. But they then got bigger. Golf balls. Tennis balls. Then, incredibly, bigger.

 A woman named Victoria Druetta grabbed one of the biggest hailstones and threw it in her freezer. It's possible the hailstone that was retrieved from her freezer was once bigger. Druetta said it melted just a bit before she put it in the freezer.

Updrafts in the thunderstorm that produced the hail had to be 120 mph or so to keep the hail suspended in the air long enough to get that big, says the Capital Weather Gang. .

The hailstone, like many biggies, has a lot of weird protrusions and bumps on it. Also, when hailstones get this big, the use up so much water to form that the stones come down few and far between at street level.

In this Argentinian hailstorm, the big stones would fall more than 20 feet apart from each other, often breaking into shards as they hit pavement.

The Argentina stone could claim second place for width, as well as be the biggest on record south of the equator. The World Meteorological Organization has not commented yet on this finding.

Here are some videos of the hail in Argentina:



Turn up the sound on this video, if you're not at work. The giant hailstones are relatively few and far between, but the sound of the impact is amazing. These hailstones really slam down: