Monster 6-inch hailstone likely to shatter Illinois state record
Hail the size of grapefruit fell in Illinois Wednesday night, and that may qualify as a new state record, if it can be officially confirmed.
Tony Laubach, AccuWeather Meteorologist, reported from Kankakee, Illinois, where destructive hail over 5 inches fell after severe weather and a confirmed tornado touchdown.
Widespread severe storms on Tuesday produced massive hail across parts of Illinois, Texas and Missouri, including a new contender for a state record.
AccuWeather Meteorologist and Storm Chaser Tony Laubach measured a hailstone 5.25 inches in diameter in Kankakee, Illinois, on Tuesday evening, larger than the Illinois state record of 4.75 inches, set on June 10, 2015, at Minooka.
Baseball-sized hail that fell in Campus, Illinois, on March 10, 2026. (AccuWeather/Tony Laubach)
“This is ginormous hail,” Laubach said on Tuesday, holding up a hailstone.
“This is nuts. This is some of the biggest hail I’ve seen in quite some time. And again, the ground is just covered in it,” he continued. “You can see as I’m walking here, just massive hailstones everywhere.”
Laubach said the stones left “craters” in the ground.
Other Skywarn spotters and storm chasers also found big hail, as large as 6.4 inches in Kankakee, 5.5 inches at Campus, Illinois, and 5.2 inches near Buckingham, Illinois. Hailstones 4.5 inches in diameter were also reported in Texas and Missouri on Wednesday. The large hail came from an intense storm stretching nearly from Mexico to Canada.
Any of these hailstones could break the record, but to make it official, the stones would typically have to be stored in a freezer at full size until they are weighed, measured and photographed by NOAA's State Climate Extremes Committee (SCEC). This process can take months or years.
A new potential record hailstone that fell in Kankakee, Illinois on March 10, 2026. (NIU/Victor Gensini)
On March 18, Dr. Victor Gensini from Northern Illinois University announced that he had measured a hailstone about 6.6 inches across and submitted the information to NOAA SCEC, considerably larger than a previous 6.14-inch stone he had documented on March 12.
Other state records recently set for hail diameter include 6.4 inches at Hondo, Texas on April 28, 2021, and 5.25 inches near Kirk, Colorado, on Aug. 8, 2023. Hail records are only maintained by the SCEC for nine states: Alabama, Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Vermont.
