Ten Years of Hail: Every Big Hail Day in Weld and Larimer County, 2016–2025

Over the last ten years, hail one inch or larger fell somewhere in Weld or Larimer County on 142 separate days — an average of about fourteen days every year. We compiled every one of them from NOAA’s Storm Events Database: the date, the county, the largest stone reported, and the towns that took the hit. If you own a roof in Northern Colorado, this is the local record the insurance statistics are built on.

Where These Numbers Come From

This table is not an estimate. NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information maintains the Storm Events Database, the official archive of severe-weather reports from trained spotters, emergency managers, and National Weather Service surveys. We pulled every hail report of 1.00 inch or larger — the National Weather Service’s severe threshold — for Weld and Larimer County from January 2016 through December 2025: 489 individual reports, condensed to one row per county per day with the day’s largest stone and the locations that reported it.

Two honest caveats. Spotter reports cluster where people live and drive, so a quiet spot on the map may just mean nobody was there to measure. And a “Weld County hail day” does not mean hail in Greeley specifically — check the locations column.

The Decade at a Glance

Source: NOAA NCEI Storm Events Database, hail ≥ 1.0 in, Weld and Larimer counties, Colorado, Jan 2016 – Dec 2025; queried July 2026. Full event-day table at the end of this article.

What Ten Years of Data Actually Shows

The season is narrow and predictable. More than nine of every ten event-days landed between May and August. July alone accounts for 42 of the 142 — the single busiest month — with June (35) and August (32) close behind. The earliest severe hail of the decade fell on April 24, 2025, near La Salle and Evans; the latest on October 1, 2022, in Erie. Outside that window, Northern Colorado hail is a genuine rarity.

Weld carries most of the load. Weld County logged 101 event-days to Larimer’s 41 — roughly two and a half times as many. Part of that is geography: storms that build against the foothills often reach severe strength as they move east over the plains. Part is also county size and reporting; Weld is nearly half again as large, with spotters spread along every highway.

Big stones are not rare. On 28 of the 142 days — about three days a year — the largest stone reached 2 inches or more. The decade’s record is a 4.25-inch stone, bigger than a softball, that fell near Pierce and Nunn on June 12, 2017 and broke windshields, including on two sheriff’s vehicles, according to the NCEI narrative.

Quiet years are part of the pattern. 2022 produced just 5 event-days; 2018 and 2019 produced 26 each. That swing is real year-to-year variance, not a trend line — which is exactly why a couple of calm summers are a bad reason to put off a roof inspection.

Where the Hail Actually Fell

The most-reported locations of the decade are on Weld’s eastern plains: Stoneham appears on 15 event-days and the Pawnee Buttes area on 13 — sparsely populated country where enormous stones (three of the decade’s four biggest) had plenty of room to fall.

Among the towns where most of our readers live, the picture over ten years:

• Greeley — on 14 event-days (including its airport), more than any other city in either county. The May 28, 2024 storm that led to a disaster declaration is one of them.
• Nunn and the north-Weld corridor (Pierce, Ault, Eaton) — Nunn alone on 11 days, including the 4.25-inch record.
• Windsor and Severance — Windsor on 10 days, spread across seven different years. Hail is not an occasional visitor there; it is a schedule.
• The Carbon Valley (Erie, Firestone, Frederick, Fort Lupton) — each town on 7 to 9 event-days, including back-to-back severe days on June 18–19, 2018.
• Fort Collins — on 10 event-days, most memorably the evening of July 5, 2019, when golf-ball hail crossed the city and Loveland in the same storm.
• Wellington and Timnath — 7 and 6 days respectively; Wellington took a 2.5-inch stone as recently as June 17, 2025.
• Loveland and Berthoud — 7 and 3 days; quieter than the county-line towns, but the July 2019 and August 2023 storms both left claims behind.

Five Days Worth Remembering

• June 12, 2017 — the decade’s largest stone: 4.25 inches at Pierce/Nunn, with severe hail from Windsor to Hereford.
• June 18–19, 2018 — consecutive days: the Carbon Valley pounded on the 18th, then a county-spanning outbreak on the 19th from Virginia Dale to Fort Lupton.
• July 5, 2019 — the evening storm that hit Fort Collins and Loveland with golf-ball hail while Erie and Windsor took 2-inch stones.
• August 4, 2020 — a single day when fourteen separate Weld locations reported severe hail, from Carr to Dacono.
• June 17, 2025 — 2.75 inches at Windsor and 2.5 at Wellington; the most recent reminder that the corridor between the two counties gets hit from both sides.

What This Means for Your Roof

The number that matters most in this table is the smallest one: 1 inch. That is not “big hail” — it is the minimum to appear here — and impact testing by the insurance industry’s IBHS research lab shows standard asphalt shingles can be damaged at exactly these sizes, especially as they age. IBHS follow-up work found that even high concentrations of sub-severe hail wear a roof down and leave it more vulnerable to the next storm — the same finding we saw play out after the Cheyenne supercell. A decade with 142 severe event-days means the average Northern Colorado roof has been sampled by damaging hail multiple times — whether or not anyone filed a claim.

The practical checklist is short:

1. After any storm in this table’s size range, get the roof inspected. Hail damage is frequently invisible from the ground, and Colorado’s claim clock runs whether you look or not. Our hail damage guide walks through the documentation and claim steps, and our roof insurance claims page covers how we document the damage when you file.
2. If you are replacing anyway, replace up. Class 4 impact-resistant shingles exist for exactly this climate, and Colorado’s new resilient-roof law is about to put grant money and disclosed insurance discounts behind them.
3. Know your policy before the season, not after. Percentage deductibles and cosmetic-damage exclusions are increasingly common on Front Range policies.

Cooper Construction is headquartered in Timnath — inside the overlap zone in this data. If your address appears anywhere in the table below, a free inspection is the cheap way to find out what the last storm actually did. Request a free estimate.

Weld and Larimer Hail: Your Questions

How often does damaging hail hit Weld County?

Over 2016-2025, Weld County averaged about ten days per year with hail of 1 inch or larger somewhere in the county — 101 event-days in ten years, nearly all between May and August. Individual towns are hit far less often, but Greeley, Nunn, and Windsor each appear on 10 or more of those days.

Which month is worst for hail in Northern Colorado?

July. Of the 142 severe-hail event-days recorded in Weld and Larimer County from 2016 to 2025, 42 fell in July, with June (35) and August (32) close behind. More than 90% of the decade’s severe hail fell between May and August.

What is the largest hailstone recorded in Weld or Larimer County in the last decade?

A 4.25-inch stone — larger than a softball — near Pierce and Nunn in Weld County on June 12, 2017. It broke windshields, including on two sheriff’s vehicles. Twenty-eight of the decade’s 142 event-days produced stones of 2 inches or more.

Does Greeley get more hail than Fort Collins?

By this record, yes. Greeley appears on 14 event-days over the decade (including its airport) versus 10 for Fort Collins, and Weld County overall logged 101 event-days to Larimer’s 41. Plains geography favors bigger, longer-lived hailstorms east of I-25.

Can 1-inch hail really damage a roof?

Yes — 1 inch is the National Weather Service’s severe threshold, and IBHS impact testing shows standard asphalt shingles can be damaged at that size, especially older ones. Repeated small hail also wears shingles down over time, so a roof that has sat under several of these storms deserves an inspection even if it never took a headline stone.

Is hail in Northern Colorado getting worse every year?

The record shows big swings, not a steady climb: 26 event-days in 2018 and 2019, just 5 in 2022, back to 18 in 2025. The honest takeaway is variance — quiet years happen, loud years return, and the roof you buy should be rated for the loud ones.

The Full List: Every Event-Day, 2016–2025

One row per county per day; sizes are the largest report of the day. Source: NOAA NCEI Storm Events Database (hail ≥ 1.0 in), queried July 2026.