WIGGINS, Colo. — Residents on Colorado's eastern plains are cleaning up after monster hailstorms left a trail of damage across the region, battering cars and homes with baseball-sized hail.
Hilary Hancock, who has lived in Wiggins since 2019, described the storm that hit Tuesday night as sounding like someone throwing baseballs at her house. The hail shattered her minivan's windshield, blew out her home's windows and punched holes through her kids' backyard slide.
WATCH: Denver7's Claire Lavezzorio met with residents to see the damage from these hailstorms first-hand.
"If you have north-facing windows, you probably don't now," Hancock said. "We're so lucky because it didn't go through the second pane."
Just east in Fort Morgan, neighbors reported ping-pong-sized hail Wednesday afternoon. Juan Baltazar walked outside to find his car's windshield smashed. Dozens of cars on his street were left in the same condition.
"This is the most severe it's been out of my whole life living here, really," Baltazar said.
The repeated pounding the region takes from hailstorms is no coincidence, according to Greg Heavener, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service.
"There's a really finite corridor of what we deem 'Hail Alley' due to the number of days, the frequency of hail storms, that occur in that area," Heavener said.
Heavener said the eastern plains sit in the heart of "Hail Alley," a corridor that sees 20 to 30 storms every year and experiences more large, damaging hail than anywhere else in North America. He said elevation plays a key role in why the region is so vulnerable.
"We are that much closer to the atmosphere's freezing level," Heavener said.
With the summer storm season just getting underway, Hancock said she and her neighbors are already bracing for what comes next.
"I think from here, we're just going to try to get it fixed and go back to normal life," Hancock said.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
