Colorado County Torn Apart By Baseball-Size Hail

Yuma County, Colorado is licking their wounds after a destructive hailstorm wreaked havoc on the night of Monday, May 20, 2024.

The hail was "baseball size", and was large enough to shatter car windows, destroy the siding of homes and businesses, and even pile up "knee high" in some locations. The photo below was shared to X by Kody Wilson , a meteorologist.

9News spoke with Yuma resident Curtis Glenn about how the hail stacked up and made it nearly impossible for some residents to leave their homes:

"The hail was still about a half-foot deep Tuesday morning, and front-end loaders were used to move it, said Curtis Glenn, a trustee at Yuma Methodist Church, which had flooding and hail damage.

On Monday night, hailstones piled up in doorways, making it impossible to open them and creating dams that pushed rainwater into buildings, he said."

Meteorologist Cory Reppenhagen for 9News has been regularly updating his followers on X with photos and videos from the storm. Check out the baseball-size comparison below:

No deaths have been reported, but CBS Colorado has noted that livestock and "at least one horse" perished in the storm.

The town of Yuma has a long road ahead of them in the recovery process. Yuma County Emergency Management believes that the hail storm produced more widespread damage than a tornado that passed through the region last year.

Videos and photos of the powerful storm are still surfacing across the internet. If you didn't know better, you might assume that some of these images were captured during the middle of a blizzard, and not a late-spring hail storm.

The Associated Press has compiled a few clips showing the destruction of the hail on Monday night. Watch below.

Yuma County is located on the eastern end of Colorado, far away from the state's towering peaks, but a knee-high hail storm begs the question- If Yuma had a ski area, would this have been considered a powder day?

We'll let you decide.

Our thoughts are with the residents of Yuma as they begin the long road to recovery.

Related: “Too Much Snow” Delays Opening of Italian Summer Ski Area

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