AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Summer storms can bring heavy rain, flash flooding, tornadoes and, of course, hail. Sometimes, the hail is the size of a pea and harmless. Other times, it is big enough to smash windshields, shred roofs and leave homeowners with costly repairs. And new research shows that hail could be getting larger. Texas Public Radio's David Martin Davies has more.
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MATTHEW CAPPUCCI: Guys, there are some more massive ones in this field over here. We're getting hail that is huge.
DAVID MARTIN DAVIES, BYLINE: On March 10, Matthew Cappucci sprang out of his car to check out freshly fallen hail.
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CAPPUCCI: Holy - record hail.
DAVIES: Cappucci is the senior meteorologist at MyRadar, a weather app. Wearing a hard hat, he is recording himself running through an unplanted farm field covered in large hailstones in Kanakee (ph), Illinois, about 60 miles south of Chicago.
CAPPUCCI: We're talking millions and millions of hailstones in excess of 6 inches in diameter. That's bigger than a softball. That's bigger than a DVD. That's almost cantaloupe-size.
DAVIES: Cappucci says the biggest hailstone he found that day would have been a new Illinois state record, but even bigger hail was recovered nearby.
CAPPUCCI: The Denault family found a 6.6-inch stone, and then someone else found a stone near 8 inches in diameter, but unfortunately it melted before it could be measured.
DAVIES: Victor Gensini is a professor of meteorology at Northern Illinois University.
VICTOR GENSINI: One of the big challenges is always getting people to save the hail after they see it.
DAVIES: Gensini says there's evidence that hailstones are getting bigger, and that's because of climate change. A warmer atmosphere creates more powerful thunderstorms. Hail forms when drops of water are juggled up into the clouds and freeze. The dipping dots of ice grow larger the longer that they're held aloft by powerful updrafts.
GENSINI: That's the air that's rushing upward towards outer space. As those updrafts get stronger, it suspends these hailstones.
DAVIES: Gensini found that climate change is creating stronger updrafts, and those ice-dipping dots grow into frozen chunks that can smash a car windshield.
GENSINI: If you look at the hail size distribution records, there is some evidence that maybe this change is already occurring.
DAVIES: Gensini co-authored a study published in the journal NPJ Climate and Atmospheric Science. He found it's not just hail that's getting bigger.
GENSINI: Every year, hail has a pretty hefty price tag. Last year in the United States alone, hail did over $50 billion in insured loss.
DAVIES: U.S. losses from hailstorms have increased fivefold since 2008. Keiana Holleman is a State Farm Insurance national spokesperson.
KEIANA HOLLEMAN: That's a national concern. Hailstorms are hitting often and doing damage. Just in March, those severe weather storms in the Midwest triggered over 50,000 claims.
DAVIES: State Farm says it paid more than $5.6 billion in U.S. hail claims in 2025 with about 1.4 billion paid in Texas alone - the state with the most hail damage. And compared to tornadoes, hail is much more destructive and not well understood. Cameron Nixon is a research scientist with Oklahoma University and the Storm Prediction Center.
CAMERON NIXON: Yeah, hail is, compared to tornadoes, very understudied.
DAVIES: He says, given the pummeling that homes are taking from large hail, solar panels getting hammered and cars being smashed, more science is needed in predicting and understanding hail.
NIXON: Well, I think when we do that, we're going to find out maybe these, you know, 6- to 8-inch stones that are just ridiculous might actually be slightly more common than we think they are.
DAVIES: So he says we should prepare for more record-smashing hail. For NPR News, I'm David Martin Davies in San Antonio.
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