Sorry to hear that. Hopefully in a couple weeks it doesn't look so bad. I'm guessing my Westminster garden got hit hard also. :-(

I'm very empathetic with you and your losses. Luckily the only plants that were pummeled here were flowers and rhubarb. I had planned on planting broccoli this past weekend, but was sick, so they're still in the pots. Lucky me!

I hate hail, and am never ready for it. Hubby's car will probably have to be totaled with dents, windows, wipers, paint, etc. damaged. My friend just called and her 3 week old new car was ruined in a similar fashion.

I didn't get that much hail, but there were parts of the yard that were completely white--some (but not most) of the hail probably close to a half inch. My hosta are shredded, but are still in "growing new leaves" mode, so will hopefully still grow out pretty well. Other things "beat down," but most of my spring blooming things are mostly done, and late spring things, like Iris, just starting to open, so no serious damage there. The neighbor's "mostly leafed out" maple across the street has turned the street into a "St. Patrick's Day Street!"

I got really close to 8/10" of precip--in less than a half an hour! Was out right up until it started turning over my tomato bed, and mixed in 7 more HUGE bags of mostly maple leaves, getting it ready to plant in a couple weeks! Could have done without the hail, but am really glad for the rain to "settle" all the new leaves into the soil for the worms!

More rain--hopefully no more HAIL--in the next couple days--and time enough for my muscles to recover from today's job before heading back out for more!

Skybird

Oh popmama, so sorry to hear!

I have all my biggest starts outside hardening off, and was preparing myself to be devastated on my return from work once I heard about today's hail. Thankfully, it seems to have missed us, but :( for your losses!

I have had to be consoled on many occasions over hail. I can't think of anything that it does besides destroy, destroy, destroy.

We got hit hard at work in Commerce City. Quarter sized hail that ended up looking like we got about 3" of snow on the ground. I was certain that when I walked out to my truck it was going to look like a giant black golf ball. Fortunately I ended up with minimal damage.

I saw pictures from out in golden the hail was nearly golfball size. A friend lost a window on their house another's car was pretty tore up.

As for the plants, well, the roads at work looked like a giant mint julep with all the green tree confetti mixed in with the "crushed ice." We got almost nothing here in Centennial that I could tell, besides rain. My seedlings were outside, but our patio is covered by the upstairs neighbors balcony, so nothing was terribly damaged, even if it is a little bit water logged.

Over at my gardens at my moms house, she said it has barely even rained. I sort of expected that because for whatever bizarre topographical and climatic reason, that little pocket right around C-470 and Bowles just has never seemed to get quite the severe thunderstorms that everywhere else does. There have been times when just a couple blocks east of there it has been the "snowstorm" hail but we got only a few pea sized stones. Its truely unbelievable sometimes.

But that does nothing for those of you who are looking at gardens turned into chopped salad. When that happens, I always try to remember my little basil plant a few years ago that got pummeled into a little 2" twig but ended up being the largest basil plant of the entire season. Or my peppers that have been completely defoliated but in a weeks time were leafing out again as if they never skipped a beat. Hail is tge bastard of all weather, theres no doubt about it, so my sympathies to all of you, this was was rough one, one of the hardest I have ever seen, I can only imagine what you guys arw having to look at outside your windows. But, hopefully by July, this is just a bad memory.

Popmama, I feel your pain, literally.

My sevens sons flower tree was looking sad after a previous hail storm or freeze (not sure what exactly it was) but this afternoon just made it go from bad to worse. I was hoping to propagate it this year. Now I'm just hoping to keep it alive.

2/3 of the leaves on my maple are now covering our driveway. My DH was home and had covered as best as he could the hosta bed under the maple. The hostas look a little weighted down from the coverings but should spring back.

I had done a ton of planting this weekend. Besides the hostas, he covered my new clematis and geraniums. The canna lilies were just bulbs, so they'll appreciate all this moisture. My DH gets a gold star for all he did for the plants.

The real damage for us though was our home. Four of the windows were pummeled and likely will need to be replaced. The glass itself is intact but the framing took a beating. The roof was badly damaged. We'll check the deck out tomorrow. I heard we're suppose to get further hail on Wednesday, so we'll see what else happens. This was one wicked storm!!!

I am so sorry to hear of the hail damage. Hail can leave a gardener feeling very defeated. I was lucky today - at my Englewood home, there were three waves of hail between 3PM and 4PM, ranging from pea, to dime, to nickel sized, and mixed with intermittent rain. There is very little damage in the garden, somehow. A few holes and tears in the lovage and cabbage. Some beat up iris buds. The lilies -and more important, the eremurus buds- are completely intact. This time...

Friends who live in Wheatridge and Denver's Berkeley neighborhood really got a pounding today. I've seen pictures of broken lawn furniture, flooded fish ponds, busted windows, trees stripped bare - I feel really lucky, today.

2014 was my worst hail year. It hit on June 14th. It smashed...everything. Plants 4 feet tall were obliterated into pulp. There were dents in the ground. It came out of nowhere, on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Only minutes long, it left me with a clean slate. I wanted to bulldoze our lot, pave it, and move far, far away! Haha, it's funny in retrospect, but at the time I was devastated. In 2015, it happened again, the last weekend of May, but I experienced intense rebound, and went on to have my best years ever for tomatoes, tomatillos, and peppers.

Right now, I'm still worried about my saplings that lost their green growth to last weekend's freeze, and hoping that the rest of the week holds no disappointment.

I feel for everyone who got hit so hard by yesterday's storm! I work in downtown Denver right near Union Station and had an astonishing birds-eye view of the storm from 20 stories up. I won't soon forget the roar of the hail pounding the windows and roof of the building and seeing the roads below become quickly swamped with flooding and piles of hail. I live in Erie and we were fortunate to escape the hail yesterday, but it's only early May and we all know we're just getting started.

Hang in there, guys! We deal with this every year and every year our gardens surprise us in one way or another! Take the necessary precautions to secure and cover what you can and let Mother Nature take care of the rest. Everything certainly has its way.

I'm so sorry to those of you that got nailed. It looked so nasty that way. All you can do is clean up and let nature do its remarkable job of mending what breaks your heart to look at. We all feel for you, knowing exactly the despair you feel when you make those inspections.

Ah, dear!! So sorry to hear about everyone's damage.(and about the poor birds) :( :( This storm sounded almost as bad as the one that hit us in July of 1990: http://denver.cbslocal.com/2015/07/11/july-11-2015-25-years-after-one-hail-of-a-storm/  People were stuck on the rides at Elitches and got bludgeoned by golfball-sized hunks of ice. Ugh,it was terrible.

I think one of the biggest gardening challenges we face as Coloradoans is the sudden hailstorms. They might not come every year, but when they do the destruction can be devastating.

Hang in there....

So sorry to hear of all of the damage to homes, gardens and vehicles. Just glad it doesn't sound like many people were caught out in this one. We only had rain here in Elizabeth but I'm just waiting for the next one...

Laura, I was caught out in the July 1990 storm. My (now) husband and I were on the way back home from speaking with the preacher who was to marry us the next month, we got stuck out on I-70 through the worst of it, truly scary.