What the Hail?

Before moving here, Jason and I were talking about what kind of extreme weather we might get in Wyoming. It's pretty easy to rule out hurricanes and tropical storms. And although it's pretty flat here in Laramie, with mountain ranges on three sides, tornadoes are very rare. We figured about all we would get here would be blizzards. We did not realize that we were moving into "hail alley".

In the 6 weeks that we have lived here, it has hailed three times. I did a little research, and the ideal conditions for hail formation are dry air moving upward into thunderstorms over mountain ranges. Bingo. In fact, Cheyenne, just 45 minutes from Laramie, is the most hail-ridden city in the US, with an average of 8.6 days of hail per year, mostly between May and August.

We did not know this when we decided to head to Cheyenne yesterday for a little shopping.

During the hailstorm, taken from the refuge of Bed, Bath & Beyond. They had to
close the automatic door because hail was blowing over 15 feet into the store.

I wish I had a ping pong ball to throw out there for comparison.
There were a variety of sizes, some up to 2" in diameter.

After the storm, it looked like it had snowed.

A front-loader clearing the roads. Insane!

 
The storm passed in 15 minutes, and left the roads completely flooded. In some places the water was 6 inches deep with hail floating in it. It was really hard to walk on, like big slippery gravel. And look what it did to our car!

I don't know if you can appreciate it in this photo, but the surface of the Ford looks like a golf ball.

And anything not metal got holes punched in it.

We're thinking maybe we should get hail insurance.