Record Hailstone Lands in Nebraska

June 24, 2003
BY STAN FINGER, The Wichita Eagle

Gene Orth thought someone had run into his house.

The loud bang pulled him away from the Weather Channel and out into his yard in Aurora, Neb., Sunday night to see what had happened.

He couldn't see anything wrong. Then a large hailstone slammed into the ground about 20 feet from him. A few feet away, another. Realizing what was going on, Orth dashed toward his house. As he opened the door, another stone smashed through the roof of his garage.

"They were huge," Orth said Monday from his home in this town of about 4,000 people in south-central Nebraska.

"I normally don't get too excited about hail, living out here, but when you start seeing stones come through the roof... I'd guarantee you it'd kill you."

The hail didn't last long, but Orth wasn't in the mood for any more surprises, so he didn't leave his house for about 30 minutes. When he finally ventured outside to assess the damage, he spotted a crater in his yard -- and the hailstone that made it.

It was a whopper.

"I don't know how big it was; I paid no never mind," he said. "I picked it up and just threw it in the deep freeze."

He wanted to show it to his wife when she got back from the seminar for school cooks she was attending out of town. Monday morning, someone else wanted to see it: the National Weather Service.

In Aurora to assess storm damage, the meteorologist had heard about Orth's stone from neighbors. When the weather official saw it, Orth said, "he got real excited."

For good reason: The stone set a Nebraska record for largest hailstone -- and nearly matched the national record. At 17 3/8 inches in circumference, it was just 1/8 of an inch smaller than the record hailstone that fell near Coffeyville on Sept. 30, 1970. Orth's stone is 6 1/2 inches in diameter; the Coffeyville stone was 7 1/2.

"It's the biggest one that our guys have seen so far," said Jeff Braun, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Hastings, Neb.

Orth is convinced the stone was even bigger when it first fell but melted some in the warm rain before he found it.

http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/6156009.htm