For the past 40 years, a massive Halloween pumpkin has been dropped off the 11th floor of UC San Diego’s Tioga Hall. This year’s pumpkin weighed 500 pounds and had 100 pounds of candy stuffed inside.
Hundreds of UC San Diego students came out Friday to watch the traditional pumpkin drop, which broke a 14-year splat radius record.
The previous drop record was set in 1995. Students dropped a 398-pound pumpkin that sent its bits and candy flying just over 100 feet.
Friday's gourd, also stuffed with candy, sent its sweet and yellow shrapnel flying over 101 feet, 6 inches. Senior carpenter and official pumpkin splat measurer Dennie Ray Bradford said there are several things factoring into this record-breaking splat.
“How it landed, velocity and candy helped it out quite a bit,” Bradford said.
Jack Berndes grew the massive squash and said he only has a growing season of about four months to do it. He said his water bill to grow the 500-pound pumpkin was more than $1,000.
Berndes claimed it grew so fast you could see it.
“I — at times — thought I saw it growing,” Berndes said. “My buddy had an instrument that could calculate movement, and he said that in the middle of the day he can see the gauge move.”
Freshman Matthew Yu almost missed the big splat, but he’s glad he didn’t.
“It was amazing. I heard a big boom and didn’t expect that to happen,” he said.
Students named this year's pumpkin “Bruh,” which is Instagram lingo for the 1990s expression “Bro.”
