Severe storms in Colorado this year have produced a lot of hail. Concertgoers were pelted by large hailstones at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in June and the Eastern Plains has been consistently hammered over the last few months.
"It will most likely be the most hail reports in a summer that we've ever seen in Colorado," State Climatologist Russ Schumacher said.
Schumacher was in Goodland, Kansas, recently trying to verify if a hailstone that fell in Yuma County this month set a new record. A storm chaser named Dan Fitts collected the hailstone and brought it to the National Weather Service office in Goodland.
The specimen melted a little in transit, but Fitts took a photo right after he found it that clearly shows its size - about five and a quarter inches in diameter.
Schumacher and others - including a team of insurance researchers - took measurements and a 3D scan of the hailstone. A group of state climate experts will likely make an official decision on any records being broken by next week.
"Pending the final approval from the state Climate Extremes Committee, this one will go in as the largest on record in terms of diameter," Schumacher said.
The hailstone won't set records for weight or circumference, though - that still belongs to a 2019 monster that fell in Bethune, Colorado.
Schumacher said this new hailstone record for diameter owes a lot to the photo taken by Fitts.
"Especially for something like hail, it really is members of the public, storm spotters, storm chasers, that provide the most valuable data," he said.
