Come Hail or High Water

It was July 2016. We still lived in Colorado Springs, when we not only got one devastating hailstorm, but were on the receiving end of a second round mere five weeks apart.

That night around 10 pm we saw a massive thunderhead spit out strobe-like lightning just east of us. We checked the radar and noticed that a thunderstorm was growing rapidly over Peterson Air Force Base which remained mostly stationary—for the time being.

But, soon we realized that the storm slowly shifted west toward us. To our surprise, we saw that the lighting became more intense and the thunder grew louder. Still, we didn’t think anything of it and were about to go to bed. Little did we know what was about to befall us.

We were finishing watching a TV show, when we heard quite the ruckus outside. We checked the back porch and noticed small hail stones bouncing in the grass. Still, we didn’t think anything of it, because dime- or nickel-sized hail was common in Colorado summer months.

Again, we checked the radar and noticed that the storm was now right above us and became once again stationary as it grew even stronger. And with the size of the storm, the size of the hailstones increased from dime-sized to nickel-sized to quarter-sized and—to our horror—to golf ball-sized just within minutes. That’s when we realized we were in trouble and attempted to bring the cars into the garage to protect them from the hail. But it was too late. The hailstones were too large and hurt like crazy. So to avoid injury, all we could do was listen as the cars were getting pelted.

Here’s a short video clip of the hailstorm. So sorry about the poor light quality of the video. We didn’t even think about shining a flashlight out into the yard with all the hubbub going on around us – duh!!! There ya go… things you only think of after the fact…

We also had to accept that we might end up with a few dings on our vehicles, but nothing worse. Of course we were wrong. We stood outside our covered back porch and continued watching as the stones got larger by the minute. You won’t believe the noise these hailstones made as they hit the house. My son picked up one of them that had bounced onto our porch. I measured it at 6 cm in diameter. See the pictures below:

We thought, surely this would end soon and the hail would turn into rain. But it didn’t. It took over half an hour before the large hailstones ceased pounding our neighborhood and property. We couldn’t see much in the dark, so we checked the inside of the house for any roof leaks. But, thank God, everything seemed to be in order. It was still storming outside so we decided to inspect the outside for damage in the morning.

The first person to leave for work was our son—except he didn’t. He came to our bedroom instead. “Mom, our cars are badly damaged. The windows are blown out.” It took a minute for me to register what he just said. “What?” I had expected dents and such, but not what I was about to see.

I threw on some clothes, then headed outside with my son. My husband was following right behind us. What we saw, shocked us. The first vehicle we saw was my son’s. The back windshield was blown out and shattered. His Avalon looked more like a golf ball at this point—although you can’t see the damage all too well in the photo with all the water on the car. He also had a large crack in his windshield.

Next, I checked on my vehicle. My Camry’s back window was also destroyed and had a large crack across the front windshield. The roof, trunk, and hood were severely dented, and the interior was soaked from the hours of rain that had followed.

Finally, my husband’s RAV4 had the least damage. His car only suffered a cracked windshield and a few dents.

We realized that all three of our cars would probably be totaled out. But when we got our house inspected, we were told we also needed a new roof, we’d get a fresh coat of house paint, and the windows facing the front needed replacing as frames were damaged.

The good news was, because the entire neighborhood took a beating, the market value of our house increased considerably, because pretty much everyone in the subdivision got a new roof, paint, and windows.

As we predicted, all our vehicles were totaled. But that wasn’t the end of the story. Five weeks after the initial hailstorm, another one hit the same area. That night, our other son was driving up from Holloman Air Force Base, NM to visit us. Again lightning lit up the sky and large hailstones came down upon us.

The good news was, this time we had a little bit of a warning, so I parked my brand-new vehicle in the garage, and my son pulled his new-used vehicle as far into the garage as possible to shelter it from new hail damage. Quickly, we covered the unprotected end of his car with moving blankets and comforters, hoping they would soften the impact.

During the torrent, hail accumulated on the streets and soon the hail turned into heavy rain, flooding ditches and streets within a short amount of time.

By the time ours son drove up from his nine-hour trip, we already had a water rescue just down the street from us when someone hydroplaned into the flooded ditch. To make matters worse, we lost power about half an hour before our son would arrive. We kept in touch with him via cell phone and told him, if he felt unsafe, to wait out the weather. Somehow he made it, and all was well. My other son’s car only received a few dings, but they were on the roof so not as noticeable. This time, we lucked out.

If you enjoy sweet small-town romances with the excitement of unruly weather sprinkled in, you might like my Southern Storms series.

Read Flood Waters for free, when you sign up for my mailing list, and see if Magnolia Hill and its charming residents is your kind of town.

You can also purchase my full-length novels of the Southern Storms series on Amazon.