Hail Storm of May 8, 2017 in Denver-Golden, CO area

[RonRC]

The hail sounded like a freight train coming down the street. When the hail stones began hitting my car, it sounded like shotgun discharges. Some that hit the concrete sounded reminiscent of 60 or 81 mm mortars being launched.
The local Mall, Colorado Mills, had its roof demolished and will be closed until November. Nearby car dealerships lost many hundreds of cars and there were claims for 11,000 damaged cars.
Our one car in the driveway was declared a total loss last Monday. The sun roof was shattered into small pieces of tempered glass. The front windshield was a total loss. Some hail dents in the roof, hood and sides of the car also split the paint. Every piece of hard plastic on the vehicle was cracked at least once.
Our roof, put on last year with class 4 hail resistant tiles, survived, but about half the houses (maybe more) in our neighborhood are in process of receiving new roofs.
We lost a back window to our house by the den. The rain gutters will have to be replaced. That will be out of pocket due to our house deductible being so high.
It has been a busy 2 weeks.
Ron

 

[BigAl52]

Sorry for your loss there Ron. I hate this time of year with the weather. I didnt get the damage you did but we did have about 2 feet of pea size hail here. It just made a mess of the trees and some of the roses but I know they will come back. At least I dont have any vehicle damage to contend with. Al

 

[RonRC]

Hi Al,
It wasn't too terribly bad for us. The window will be costly, but we were planning to sell the 10 year old car anyway. Shockingly, the car insurance settlement was fair.
I'll seal some of the gutter cracks with liquid steel or something similar and leave them with the dents.
If it wasn't for the storm, I wouldn't have had the exciting experience of driving a Nissan Mini-cargo van rental car.  :shock: That is all the rental company had, given the demand from the storm. It probably was the worst car I ever have driven!
Ron

 

[Kentucky Colonel]

Wow. That must have been a little disconcerting when it was happening. I hate that you have to deal with clean up. I hope you used one of those to make a nice stiff drink!

 

[RonRC]

I did ease the pain with a straight diet Coke!
My wife says that by my being mostly a non-drinker, I am a really cheap date. :lol: Admittedly, I had a half a glass of wine and a friend gave me a shot of single malt whiskey last year.
Ron

 

[lighthorseman]

Bummer Ron.....I remember in the summer of......I think it was '84 State Farm was paying out $2,000,000 a day for auto claims after a huge hailstorm hit Denver....I didn't feel too bad for them since a year earlier they tried to settle a million dollar claim with us for $25,000.....which fortunately my wife refused!

p.s. I take away my pain with a Rout 44 Diet cherry/diet Dr. Pepper from Sonic!

 

[Muley Hunter]

There's a woman who lives in my building was in that area when the storm hit. Her car isn't totaled, but pretty close to it. The insurance is going to fix it. She's pretty upset because she just bought the car new a week before the storm.

We got hail, but smaller size and no damage.

 

[lighthorseman]

At my Grandparents farm outside of Quanah Texas, we had rain and hail mixed with stones as big as soft balls....beat the corrugated metal off the roof of the house. The 70 ac, wheat field next to the house had just been disk harrowed. The next day the field looked like the surface of the moon with the larger craters as big as a truck tire and several inches deep.....within the large craters and rest of the surface were various sizes of craters matching the pea size to softball size stones which fell. I was a half mile from the house on foot fixing fence when the storm started...ran the fastest 1/2 mile of my life....made in just as the big ones began to fall. Lost no livestock but probably would have had they not been in another pasture several miles from the house....horses took shelter in the barn as did the chickens in the hen house......scary stuff! :affraid:...two weeks later we had a tornado! Praise God for northern Idaho! :cheers:

 

[RonRC]

Some photos of the damage:

 

[exMember]

I know that horrible feeling! We went through that years ago and lost a new car, truck dented to hell and my old isuzu looked like a golf ball until the day I sold it LOL. Always try to invest in some sort of garage.

 

[Buck Conner1]

Bummer Ron.....I remember in the summer of......I think it was '84 State Farm was paying out $2,000,000 a day for auto claims after a huge hailstorm hit Denver....

That was 1985 I was in a winner 1984 Pinto wagon, it hit so fast all I could do was get in the back seat and cover up. The hail took out the windshield, rear window and driver's side windows. This car was a piece of crap before the storm and a real jewel after. I had a picture I gave the Good Hands People that made this car look pretty darn good, they settled fairly (always figured that old picture saved the day).  Lived near Estes Park for years and we would get some really bad storms, worst the the Big Thompson Flood of Aug. 1 1976 that killed 144 folks and cost $35 million. I worked that area as a searcher and as a welder for the phone company for six months placing cable from Loveland to Estes.

 

[RonRC]

Last year we put a Class 4 Owens Corning hail resistant roof on the house. It replaced the old shake roof. Cost $$$$. If we had waited, we would have had new roof due to the hail storm, paid for by insurance, just like our neighbors. Oh, well. At least they were fair with the damaged (destroyed) car.
Ron