Severe weather season is in full swing across Texas, and the Texas Hill Country saw some of the worst of it Thursday night, April 29. Reports of “baseball-size hail” came in alongside videos of massive balls of ice slamming into the countryside.

The National Weather Service warned of large hail risk Thursday, but few seemed prepared for what ended up being ice blocks that were inches in diameter slamming into porches and windshields. But alerts quickly began hitting phones across the Texas Hill Country at around 9 p.m. Thursday as a hail storm swept east across the rolling hills of Texas.

“All my vehicles look like a damn golf ball now,” Steve Hoyland Jr. said, sharing his experience in Camp Wood alongside a photo of a massive piece of hail in his yard.

Images and videos are swirling online of the impact this hail storm had on communities from Del Rio and miles east into the Hill Country. And these storms didn’t seem to be 30-second quick hit either.

Hoyland also shared a video showing increasingly large hail hurling down from the clouds for at least 4 minutes. It’s the latest in what is proving to be a rather active severe weather season in the Lone Star State as other cities continue to grapple with heavy rains and even a tornado.

And the storms are still coming. More clouds are set to loom over the state this weekend, threatening excessive rain and life-threatening floods. For Hoyland, this was the worst hail he’d seen in 52 years, but others say it’s just typical of Texas Hill Country living.

“It happens quite a bit in the Hill Country. If ya know, ya know,” Larry Skains replied.

In reality, this hail storm was record-breaking. The National Weather Service said a storm chaser tracking this hail event measured a block of ice that was 7.1 inches across.

“A new Texas hailstone record has been verified,” the NWS office reports. “The official measurement of the hailstone is 7.1″ which beats out the previous Texas hailstone record of 6.46″ from 2021.”

This article originally published at ‘Baseball-size hail’ recorded in record-breaking Texas hail event.