If you want to get away from cell phone service, there aren’t many places more remote than southeastern Colorado. This ranch country is also home to one of the most violent forms of weather: gigantic hail.

“Eastern Colorado is pretty dang remote, especially the southeast part of the state. There have been times when the National Weather Service will call the two ranches that are in a tornado (or severe thunderstorm) warning. Because the ranches are so big and so open,” Matt Meister said. Meister is the chief meteorologist at Colorado Springs’ FOX21 TV station. He’s one of the foremost experts on the area’s geography and weather patterns.

“Sometimes it literally is in the middle of nowhere and is of no risk to anyone or any buildings. And hail cores can kind of be the same way. But when those things are over town, that’s a totally different story,” Meister said.

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Twenty-four years for Meister’s family in Colorado Springs. Three brand new roofs installed. Welcome to Hail Alley.

“And that’s about on schedule here in Colorado Springs. I think about once a decade you’re probably going to get hit,” with a devastating hail storm, Meister said. Even predicting the weather accurately across Southeastern Colorado couldn’t save him from an expensive roof repair.

“My parents drove up from Arizona in their brand new Toyota Camry. They had been at the house for about 90 minutes,” he said. “My parents’ car was decimated. ‘Hey, check out our new car.’ Boom.”

Hail, not wildfire, is the single largest driver of insurance claims and insurance loss in the state of Colorado. Forming almost exclusively in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, these particularly massive hunks of ice can replicate the impact of a military artillery round, rather than a micro-dent on your car’s hood. Hailstones like these are found almost nowhere else on Earth.

The National Weather Service opts for a unique scale for a hailstone’s size. Things you might have in your junk drawer to make for an easy comparison to damaging hail. There are ping pong balls, quarters, and DVDs. If you hear any of these sizes of hailstones hitting your roof or car, you’re in trouble.

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“So when it comes to the losses in eight of the last 11 years, the source of the losses has actually been hail. So it’s not the wildfires,” Mike Conway said. Conway is Colorado’s insurance commissioner, working to get homeowner protection from hailstorms. He mentioned metal roofs as a possible fix for some, but these remodels can cost thousands of dollars for a relatively small reduction in insurance premiums.

“Colorado is a high-catastrophe state. Anyone who lives in Colorado knows that hail is our biggest, largest catastrophe that we have for insurance,” Carole Walker of the Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association (RMIA) said. Walker, the Association’s executive director, is keenly aware of hail’s high cost.

“Our most expensive hail storm was over $2.3 billion,” Walker said. In 2025-equated money, that’s the same cost as Colorado’s Marshall Fire, considered the worst fire disaster in state history.

The RMIA published a “shingle performance scorecard” on its website, but experts continue to recommend a metal roof in Colorado’s Front Range. Changes that individual homeowners make can affect home insurance premiums.

While the Meisters have a new roof coming soon, the hope is that you’ll never need to replace yours. But if you do, the RMIA lists several practical steps, especially when it comes to working with contractors:

• Be sure roofers have workers’ compensation and liability insurance. If they don’t, you may be held liable if one of the workers is injured or if they damage a neighbor’s property.
• Don’t make the final payment to the roofing company until your roof has been inspected and you are satisfied.

Even in Colorado’s ultra-remote Southeastern corner, there’s always the next “big one.”

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