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Woman rescued from ‘arctic river' of hail and rain in Greeley

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GREELEY, Colo. — Hail and rain came so heavy and fast in Greeley it prompted a rescue of a woman stuck in her car in an “arctic river.” 

That’s how neighbor Kim Lorenson described the two feet of piled up hail in front of her home on Tuesday around noon. 

“I just kept watching it fill up the yard,” she said. 

Lorenson lives near a dip in her neighborhood street. The drain had become clogged by all the hail.

“It looked like an arctic river,” she described.

The hail came up to the top of her pickup truck’s rear tire and was basically at that same level all the way across the street. 

That’s when an older woman became stuck in it in her small white car. 

“I got my a shovel, and I ran out to help her,” Lorenson said. “My and neighbor over here was shoveling a little path through try to drain the water, and then we had a neighbor down the street who had to get his canoe, and he paddled out to her just as the fire department came.”

The fire department was able to rescue the woman. 

There was so much hail left over that the city called in heavy construction equipment to scoop up the hail from the street and put it in a dump truck.