Colorado Springs often gets random hail storms that blow through in the middle of the summer, but Thursday night’s storm was a new beast for many people.
Residents mainly living in northeast Colorado Springs, Security-Widefield and Fountain woke up Friday to find severe hail damage had pummeled their property.
Windows of cars and homes were smashed, dents covered almost every car hood, roofs were beaten, cloth canopies were shredded, plants and trees were ripped apart.
Colorado Springs Utilities said the weather wiped out power to 1,800 customers in the Cimarron Hills area.
Eighteen residents of the Value Place Motel were displaced by storm damage, according to the American Red Cross. A shelter was opened to them at 2025 N. Murray St.
Brian Bledsoe, chief meteorologist for Gazette news partner KKTV, called it “one of the worst storms of the summer” and an “absolute hail bomb.”
“I knew it was going to be bad the way it came so strong and suddenly,” resident Sol Sinclair said Friday as he assessed damage to his property on Holt Drive. The back window of his roommate’s Kia was shattered. His week-old Ram 1500 was peppered with dents.
Flooding in the cul de sac reached the rim of his truck tires, he said.
“I’ve lived in Colorado 10 years and I’ve never seen it this bad,” Sinclair said.
The Colorado Springs Police Department wasn’t spared, either.
Their Stetson Hills Division near Cimarron Hills suffered dents to a fleet of about 40 cars. More than half of them had busted windshields. In at least four vehicles, the back windshield was shattered, rendering the vehicle unusable. Officers were triaging the remaining vehicles to determine which cracks they could drive with and which would keep the cruisers parked, Lt. Catherine Buckley said.
An early count determined about 27 cruisers with windshields so damaged officers couldn’t see out of them, but that number was expected to go up. One vehicle flooded.
“We’re still here, we’re still doing our job,” Buckley said, noting vehicles were brought from other divisions to cover patrols. “The thing with police work, you always adapt.”
Insurance agents are busy with assessments, a State Farm spokeswoman said Friday. It will likely be next week before the full extent of the damage is known, according to Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association spokeswoman Carole Walker. The Association tracks weather events that do more than $25 million in damage, she said.
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