Texas, April 17 : Gina Brown, a Texas resident, found a massive hailstone measured at 5.7 inches in her yard after the storm tore through the area. On April 12, Gina found “what she could not believe” a massive hailstones littered in her yard, at least 5 inches around. “It was so big, I actually thought it was a piece of Styrofoam,” Brown said. “There’s a construction site next door to our house.” “I’m telling you, this was the coolest thing I have ever experienced,” she said. She posted a picture of the enormous ball of ice on social media, which later caught attention of both insurance and National Weather Service researchers, who urged her to preserve it for study, reports NY Post. Ian Giammanco, who is the lead research meteorologist at the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, said he was eager to get a team down to do just that. His team arrived in Salado on Thursday night and took measurements and a 3-D laser scan of the stone. “These things are not that common, and we want to make sure we can preserve them digitally for future study,” Giammanco said in a news programme on Friday. He said that the stone found is a bit smaller than the largest hailstone on record in Texas, which fell last April in Hondo and had a diameter of 6.4 inches. “Researchers will use a 3-D printer to create a replica of the hailstone which will be placed in a wind tunnel to study aerodynamics,” Giammanco said. Reports indicate that at least 23 people were injured after the storm ripped through central Texas. It is reported that last week was the fourth week in a row with a severe weather outbreak in parts of the US. About 1,400 reports of tornadoes, high winds or hail have been received by the National Weather Service in three severe outbreaks since March 21. MYK GNK