YUMA, Colo. — Hundreds of Yuma, Colorado, residents and business owners were busy cleaning up and making repairs Tuesday, after a hailstorm wreaked havoc through town Monday night.
"It was tremendous. It was tremendous," said Keven Means, a local contractor and resident in Yuma.
He told Denver7 he heard tornado sirens on Monday night and immediately made his way toward one of the shelters in town. He added he woke up bright and early Tuesday, ready to help his fellow neighbors and customers board up broken windows.
"All we've been doing today is patching windows. And looking at the damage and trying to keep everybody dry if it's supposed to rain again tonight, somebody told me," Means said.
Four windows were shattered by hail at Means' home, though he said his priority was focusing on those around him in town.
"Everybody lost something, they had to have," Means said. "It's just what it is."
Less than a mile down the road, Victoria Riley and her daughters, Scarlett and Autumn, were busy cleaning up their home, too.
Riley said she and her husband had just put her daughters down to bed when they realized the storm was worse than they thought.
"We decided we better move the girls and right as I grabbed her, our window busted through as her and I were running out, and so I moved them into my room and then my windows started breaking so I had to wake everybody up," she said. "We just sat in the living room and I kind of calmed them all down and then the alerts started going off on my phone that baseball-sized hail was coming, so she totally freaked out, but we never got baseball-sized hail, it just kind of slowed down."
She told Denver7 it was the sound of the hail hitting her home that really scared her family.
"It just sounded like our house was just getting slammed with, like, rocks," she said.
Weather News
Heavy equipment used to clean up hail piled knee-deep in small Colorado city
While Riley worked on cleaning up her home, others in town, like Escobar Auto Glass Repair, worked on helping others fix what was broken.
"This morning, it was hectic. It was very hectic," said Diego Escobar.
Escobar and his family own and work at the glass repair shop and live in Yuma. He told Denver7 their phones had been ringing nonstop with people asking for quotes and times to get their windshields fixed.
"You know, there's people coming in and out asking for windshields and yeah, it's been... it's been crazy this morning," Escobar said. "We've only replaced I believe, like four or five? I'm assuming tomorrow there's gonna be up to like 50 to maybe 100 windshields."
Escobar said he and others who live in town are just working on repairs as fast as they can before another storm rolls in their way.
Rocky Ford Melons are on the way
Rocky Ford farmers have been making their way from the farm to a grocery store near you. Tag along for the harvest and see what the process is like that is a staple of the Lower Arkansas River Valley.
