Announcement expected today on record stone

Talk about it

More...

• Vivian residents relate tales of massive hailstorm
• 7.28.10: Vivian hail damage

VIVIAN — A National Weather Service staffer in South Dakota said Leslie Scott’s hailstone is the biggest one ever measured in the United States.

Dave Hintz, the National Weather Service staffer who first examined the hailstone, said he expects a national panel to issue that announcement.

The hailstone, which measured 8 inches in diameter with an 18.625-inch circumference, may be proclaimed the new American record hailstone today. It weighed 1.93 pounds.

A National Weather Service media staffer in Washington, D.C., said a press release is being prepared and will likely be released today.

The hailstone has caused a tremendous amount of interest in South Dakota and across the nation, Hintz said.

“It’s just amazing how much interest a piece of ice can generate,” he said with a laugh Wednesday. “Just amazing.”

It thudded to earth in Vivian during the large storm that swept across South Dakota Friday night. Scott, a local ranch hand, collected three of the stones and put them in his freezer.

Scott, 55, was putting up hay Wednesday and awaiting the official word if he was indeed the owner of a record iceball.

He said he was told the hailstone, which is still in his refrigerator freezer, will be taken to Boulder, Colo., where a sample will be taken and a mold will be made to cast copies of it.

Scott said he wants a copy to place in the Lyman County Museum, along with a photo of the storm.

He said the entire matter has been somewhat amazing and he feels fortunate to have the largest example of the hail that slammed into the area.

“There were bigger ones that hit in Vivian,” Scott said during a telephone interview from a hayfield. “I just got lucky, I guess.”

The stone was much larger at first, he said. But his electricity was off for six hours that night — “and that didn’t help it” — and people kept stopping by to take a look at it, Scott said, so he opened the freezer door several times.

“It shrunk up a lot,” he said.

Scott’s mother, Lauretta Scott, has lived in the Vivian area for 60 years. She said she has “never, ever” seen such a storm.

Lauretta Scott said she took the biggest one she found to her son’s home, but he had an even larger stone.

That hailstone was examined Saturday by Hintz. His data was submitted to a national board for consideration as the national record. There was some thought it was a world record, but Scott said he has been told a larger hailstone was recorded in China.

Members of the National Climate Extremes Committee held a teleconference Wednesday to investigate the hailstone. The NWS media staffer said a three-person panel needs to proclaim the hailstone the largest ever, but one of the members was in a conference Wednesday.

Jim Scarlett, the meteorologist in charge of the Aberdeen NWS office, and Hintz, the warnings coordination meteorologist, participated in the call with the national board Wednesday. Hintz said he can’t imagine a reason that the hailstone isn’t the new record holder.

Hintz said they were asked how the hailstone was measured and what angles were used when photographs were taken.

The current record hailstone was 7 inches in diameter with a circumference of 18.75 inches. It pounded to the ground in Aurora, Neb., on June 22, 2003.

Hintz said he’s been asked if this is a fraud but he’s sure it isn’t, since Scott had two others almost as large in his freezer and other locals had massive ones as well.

He’s seen several large hailstones before, including some the size of golfballs and others nearly baseball-sized. But Hintz said he’s never measured and studied one like the Vivian hailstone.

“This is definitely the exception,” he said.

It takes unusual conditions for such a massive chunk of ice to be formed, according to Greg Herman, meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service office in Sioux Falls.

Herman said a storm must have a great deal of “upward lift” to keep hailstones in the air while they melt and then refreeze into giant stones.

“Normally, that’s the case, and I think that’s what happened in this case, too,” he said.

Herman said 103 mph winds are required to keep a softballsize hailstone in the air. A softball is 4.5 inches in circumference, about half the size of the Vivian hailstone.

The storm would also have to contain a great deal of humidity, Herman said. Such storms are most likely in mid to late summer, he said.

Hintz said the hailstone may have some value, either as a tourist attraction or to a collector. A cast should perhaps be displayed in a local museum, he said.

“There’s all kinds of people who have an intense interest in weather,” Hintz said.

Scott said he’s not sure if he will try to make any money off the massive piece of ice in his freezer.

“Don’t know yet,” he said.

If he does, he could use it to fix the three or four holes the hail left in his roof. A roofer stopped by Wednesday and said he was lucky, Scott said, since many homes in Vivian were damaged much worse. His mother’s house has about 30 holes in it, he said.

Tags: out towns, news, weather, vivian, hailstone