Colorado's August 10–17 Hail Week: Eight Straight Days, 2.85-Inch Hail, and What the Radar Shows

I've been roofing in Colorado for about three years, and I've learned to respect late-season storms. August is technically still prime hail season here, but a lot of homeowners have mentally checked out by mid-summer. This past week was a reminder not to.

Between August 10 and August 17, MRMS (Multi-Radar Multi-Sensor) radar flagged hail cells over Colorado on eight consecutive days. Seven of those are distinct hail days on the season counter: August 11's readings only repeated the cells MRMS had already reported on August 10, and a repeat is the same hail, not a second hail day. This wasn't a single afternoon pop-up — it was a sustained, multi-day outbreak that built in intensity through the middle of the week. It also landed directly on top of the August 3–10 stretch, which had already put hail somewhere in the state every single day.

What the Radar Tracked, Day by Day

MRMS is a NOAA-operated network that stitches together data from multiple weather radars to flag grid cells where hail is likely falling. Each cell covers roughly one square kilometer. Here's what the system detected over Colorado this week:

August 11 was a near-miss day — only 56 cells, the system basically blinked, and every one of those cells had already been reported the day before (MRMS publishes a trailing 24-hour maximum, so a post-midnight snapshot re-reports the previous day). That is why August 11 does not count as its own hail day in the season total below. Then it reloaded. By August 16, MRMS was flagging nearly 25,000 grid cells in a single day. That's a lot of Colorado getting pelted.

One critical thing to understand: MRMS measures radar-estimated hail exposure — what the atmosphere produced at altitude. It does not confirm ground-level damage. A cell can be flagged and the hail might have melted before impact, or it might have bounced off a metal roof with no lasting effect. What this data tells you is that your area was in the exposure envelope — it does not tell you whether your roof is damaged. That takes a real inspection.

What 2.85 Inches Actually Means on a Roof

Baseball-sized hail (around 2.75 inches) is a threshold I pay attention to on the jobsite. At 1.5 inches (golf ball), asphalt shingles typically show bruising — the granule matrix compresses and fractures, but the damage isn't always immediately visible. By 2 inches (hen egg), you're looking at more consistent bruising, cracked tab corners, and accelerated granule loss. At 2.85 inches — which is close to baseball — an older asphalt roof often doesn't survive without meaningful damage.

What makes this week's event notable isn't just the hail size. It's the sustained duration. Roofs hit by moderate hail on Tuesday might have taken another round on Friday. Stacked exposure compounds the stress on shingles.

This is also the week of the year when homeowners start asking me whether a tougher shingle is worth it on the next replacement. That's a real question with real tradeoffs, and I've written up the cost and ROI math on impact-resistant Class 4 shingles separately rather than hand-wave it here.

That said: I haven't been on your roof. I'm reporting what the radar detected. The only way to know if your specific property took damage is to get up there and look — or have someone qualified do it for you.

Where We Are in the 2026 Colorado Hail Season

This week pushed Colorado's 2026 season-to-date total to 67 hail days tracked by MRMS — distinct Mountain-Time dates with new hail of 1 inch or larger somewhere in the state, counted the way the Colorado hail statistics page counts them. We're in the back half of August, which historically is still active for the Front Range before the season starts winding down in late September. If you want the longer view of how a normal Colorado season is shaped, the Colorado hail statistics breakdown lays out the multi-year pattern.

HailScore's database now holds more than 34.4M+ NOAA-linked hail records across all sources, including over 8.6M+ NOAA NEXRAD radar records going back to 2015. That depth matters because it means your property's score isn't just based on last week — it's based on a decade of accumulated exposure data, which is the kind of context a single storm report can't give you.

Northern Front Range readers in particular: Larimer County stayed busy through this stretch, and the Fort Collins hail damage and storm history breakdown covers what that corridor typically sees and how to check your own address there.

How to Check If Your Address Was in the Swath

After a multi-day event like this, a lot of homeowners want to know: did hail actually hit my house? The honest answer is that radar gives you exposure probability, not a ground-truth confirmation. But it's a useful first step.

Here's the process I'd walk a homeowner through:

Look up your address on myhailscore.com. Your free HailScore™ report shows radar-detected hail events near your property, sized and dated. If this week's storms were close, they'll appear on the map with estimated size and distance.

Check your map, not your neighbor's story. I've had homeowners tell me "the street over got totaled but we're fine" — and I've been on their roof finding clear bruising. Hail doesn't care about property lines.

Walk your yard. Shredded hostas, dented downspouts, pocked window screens, and bruised AC fins are ground-truth signals. If you're seeing those, get someone on the roof.

Call a roofer who'll give you an honest assessment — not just a re-roof pitch. I know this is self-serving to say, but a lot of storm chasers flood into affected areas and tell every homeowner they need a new roof regardless of actual damage. A legitimate inspection should tell you what's actually wrong, whether that's nothing, minor repairs, or full replacement.

The August Trap

One pattern I see every year: homeowners file in June, forget about it in July, and then August hits with another round. By the time they do look up, they've got cumulative exposure they don't know about — and a storm they never documented.

Claim deadlines and coverage rules vary by carrier and policy; confirm yours with your insurer or the Colorado Division of Insurance (doi.colorado.gov). For a storm that hit August 13, whatever your window turns out to be, it started then. That doesn't mean you need to panic-file a claim today. It means you need to know what actually happened to your roof — and documenting a storm while it's fresh is a lot easier than reconstructing one later.

MRMS data shows us where the exposure was. It can't tell you what it means for your specific property. That's the gap we're trying to help homeowners close — not by overstating what the radar shows, but by giving you the data so you can ask the right questions.

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If your address was anywhere in Colorado this week, it's worth running a free lookup at myhailscore.com. It takes about 60 seconds and you'll see every radar-detected hail event near your property going back years, not just this week. No signup required for the basic report.