KUSA — It's been one year since the epic hailstorm that is currently the costliest in Colorado's history.
The storm on May 8, 2017, closed Colorado Mills mall for months and damaged hundreds of other homes and businesses. Wheat Ridge city officials said last year that around half of homeowners in the city suffered roof damage from the storm.
Denny Cunningham's home in Denver's Berkeley neighborhood had extensive damage. All the front facing windows of his home shattered from the golf ball sized hail that broke the glass and damaged his roof.
"It just looks like somebody had a ball-peen hammer and was smashing away at it putting dents. Mostly you can just see where the grit's been ripped off the shingles," he explained to 9NEWS last May.
At the time, the Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association estimated that losses would exceed $1.4 billion and the day before the one-year anniversary of the storm, RMIIA updated the estimate to be $2.3 billion. The higher estimate is based on approximately 167,000 auto insurance claims and 100,600 homeowners insurance claims.
Colorado Mills Mall in Lakewood was forced to close for months due to extensive damage from the large hail. The storm pelted the roof for 15 minutes, causing parts of the roof to break and flood the mall. As many as three inches of water filled most of the mall, forcing security to close the mall and forcing stores to get new inventory.
It finally opened in November just in time for the holiday shopping season.
The storm was so intense it was even captured from by a NASA's GOES-R satellite
