Gill Forensic Weather & Hail Impact Report

You know, living here in Gill, we’re right in that sweet spot where the Front Range weather really cuts its teeth. The geography is the main culprit—we sit on that flat, open prairie just east of the foothills, and when those spring and early summer storms roll off the Rockies, they don’t have any mountains to break them up. They actually gain speed and intensity as they hit the open ground, and that’s when the hail gets nasty. We’re talking about stones the size of golf balls, sometimes bigger, coming down at a steep angle with nothing to slow them down. It’s not just the impact that gets you, either; the wind that comes with these supercells can hit 60 or 70 miles an hour, and it’ll lift those shingles right off the deck before the hail even has a chance to finish the job.

And it’s not just a one-and-done thing, either. Our severe weather season is a long one, stretching from late April all the way through September, with a second burst of wind and hail in the fall when those cold fronts slam into the warm, humid air left over from summer. I’ve seen roofs that were perfectly fine in March look like Swiss cheese by July. The combination of that intense UV exposure baking the asphalt all summer, followed by the sudden shock of a hailstorm, makes the shingles brittle and prone to cracking on impact. So, when a storm’s brewing and the sky turns that weird green color, I know the phone’s going to start ringing. It’s just a matter of time before this part of the county takes another hit.