As the atmosphere warms, the potential for hail as large as a grapefruit is growing A large hailstone made up of an aggregate of smaller ice particles Public domain via Wikimedia Commons This spring, massive thunderstorms swept across the upper Midwest. Along with destructive winds and tornados, these storms brought record-sized hail. In Illinois, one meteorologist, Victor Gensini, found a 16-inch diameter hailstone that weighed over a pound. “It didn’t just break the record, but it shattered the record,” Gensini , a meteorologist at Northern Illinois University told the Chicago Sun Times ’ Kaitlin Washburn after a big storm in March. “We’ve never seen anything like this since we’ve been recording hail, which started in the mid-1950s.” This continues a streak of state-record-setting hail. In Texas in 2024, for example, a storm produced a pineapple-sized hailstone .…