A giant chunk of hail that plunged into the prairie town of Vivian, S.D., last Friday was confirmed today as the heaviest hailstone ever recorded in the United States.
The National Climate Extremes Committee, a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, confirmed the weight of a record 1.94 pounds and also a record diameter (8 inches).
The previous heaviest — a hailstone stone that fell in Coffeyville, Kan., on Sept. 3, 1970 — was 1.67 pounds, according to records from the National Climatic Data Center.
The world record belongs to a 2.25-pound hailstone that fell in Bangladesh on April 14, 1986, according to Paul Hudspeth, a meteorologist at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.