Colorado Hail Storm Report, August 22, 2026: Watkins, Brighton and Fort Lupton

A hail-producing storm crossed Colorado on August 22, 2026. The National Weather Service has logged 9 hail reports in and around Red Hawk’s service area for that date, the largest at 1.50 inches. Watkins, Brighton and Fort Lupton took the most reports.

The Colorado hail map — August 22, 2026

Every hail report in and around Red Hawk’s service area

These are National Weather Service Local Storm Reports — hail an observer found on the ground, not a radar estimate. Times are MDT. “Measured” means the stone was physically measured; “reported” means a size category or description was relayed to the NWS — mPING and public descriptions are not measurements.

By city: Watkins 2 reports, Masters 2 reports, Brighton 2 reports, Orchard 1 report, Arapahoe Park 1 report, Fort Lupton 1 report. A hail report always names the largest stone an observer found, not the average size that fell across every roof.

The heaviest hail of the day fell northeast of the metro, along the Weld–Morgan county line. Two of the reports above sit inside that core: the 1.50 inch report four miles south-southwest of Orchard falls within radar’s estimated 2.50-inch contour, and the 1.25 inch report three miles east of Masters within the estimated 2.00-inch contour — the strongest estimated hail core anywhere in Colorado on August 22. Radar’s peak estimate for the day, the 2.75-inch band — the top of the contour scale, so larger hail can sit inside it — lies about 0.3 miles from the Orchard report. Colorado’s largest ground report of the day came from the same storm further along its track, 1.75 inches two miles west-northwest of Jackson Reservoir at 4:25 PM, outside our service area.

This storm also brought damaging wind

Hail was not the whole story on August 22. The National Weather Service logged ten thunderstorm wind gust reports across Colorado that day, nine of them measured rather than estimated. Six fell within ten miles of a Red Hawk service-area city. Times are MDT.

Why this matters more than the hail size alone:the 70 mph gust southeast of Watkins was logged at the same location as the 1.50 inch hail report, eight minutes earlier, and a mesonet station three and a half miles west measured 67 mph at 2:40 PM. Hail falling on that kind of wind does not come straight down. It arrives at an angle, which puts siding, window wraps, screens, garage doors and the windward elevation of a roof in scope — not just the shingles facing up. If you are having a roof looked at after this storm, have the walls looked at too.

Why 1.50-inch hail matters to an asphalt roof

Damage scales hard with stone size. A one-inch stone falls at about 41 mph and lands with roughly 1.3 joules of energy. A 1.75 inch stone falls at about 65 mph and lands with roughly 16 joules — about thirteen times the impact. Denver-area elevation adds another 8 to 10 percent to fall speed.

Published impact studies put the onset of functional damage near 1.00 inch for three-tab asphalt shingles, 1.25 inches for architectural shingles, and 2.00 inches for Class 4 impact-rated products. The largest report in and around our service area this day was 1.50 inches, past the threshold for architectural shingles.

The damage usually is not visible from the ground. Hail bruises the shingle — fracturing the mat beneath a surface that still looks intact — and the bruised area then sheds its protective granules over the following months. A roof hit in June can look fine all summer and start leaking by winter.

Radar-estimated hail is not measured hail

Radar hail algorithms output a deliberate high-end estimate of what may exist inside a storm cloud, not a measurement of what landed on your roof. Radar estimates characteristically run above what observers actually recover. Treat the shaded swath on the map as the search area and the ground reports as the confirmed observations. If a contractor tells you radar showed three-inch hail at your address, ask whether anyone measured it.

What to do if you were under it

1. Check from the ground, not the roof. Walking a hail-struck roof is how people get hurt.
2. Look in your gutters. Granules washing off in quantity is the most common early sign.
3. Check soft metal. Roof vents, gutters, flashing, the mailbox, AC condenser fins. Dents in soft metal date the storm.
4. Photograph what you find with your phone. Phone photos carry a timestamp. Do not edit them.
5. Get it inspected. Especially if this storm was months ago — that is exactly when bruising starts to surface.

Radar estimate and ground reports by city — August 22, 2026

The map above is the search area. This table asks two narrower questions for each Red Hawk service-area city: did any NWS ground report come from inside the city’s actual boundary, whatever locality name the NWS filed it under; and did a radar-estimated hail band of 1.00 inch or larger cross that boundary? A ground report is an observation and always lists the city. The band is an MRMS estimate, not a measurement.

Radar estimated hail to 2.00 inches over part of Watkins (less than 1 percent of it, in its south part); the 1.00 inch band covered about 14 percent of it. On the ground, two National Weather Service hail reports came from inside the Watkins city limits, the largest 1.50 inches (reported).

Radar estimated hail to 1.00 inch over part of Fort Lupton (about 10 percent of it, in its southeast part). On the ground, one National Weather Service hail report came from inside the Fort Lupton city limits: 1.00 inch (reported).

Radar estimated hail to 1.00 inch over part of Brighton (about 5 percent of it, in its northeast part). On the ground, two National Weather Service hail reports came from inside the Brighton city limits, the largest 1.25 inches (reported).

On the ground, one National Weather Service hail report came from inside the Aurora city limits: 1.00 inch (reported). That report was logged by the NWS under the locality name “2 S Arapahoe Park”. That report plots within 0.5 miles of the Aurora boundary (see the note below). Radar placed only the 0.50 inch band over part of Aurora (about 7 percent of it, in its southeast part), an estimate below the size reported on the ground.

The strongest radar-estimated core of this storm, the 2.75 inch band, crossed no Red Hawk service-area city. It sits over unincorporated Morgan County and Weld County, ZIP codes 80649, 80652 and 80654, about 4.3 miles west of the Wiggins city limit. Named roads under it: County Road 91, I-76, US Highway 6 and County Road 42.5. The nearest ground report was 0.3 miles away (“4 SSW Orchard”, 1.50 inches). No ground observer reported from inside it — reports come from where people happen to be, and their absence is not evidence that nothing fell.

Where a report is marked above, its point plots within 0.5 miles of the city line it was placed across. An NWS report position is not surveyed: it is quoted to two decimal places and is derived from a whole-mile distance on a 16-point compass, so a point that close to a line cannot be resolved to one side of it. Those reports are still listed, because they are the National Weather Service record; only the city they are credited to is left open. City boundaries are the U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line 2025 place limits; Denver neighborhoods use the City and County of Denver’s statistical neighborhood polygons. A city is listed if any NWS ground report came from inside that boundary, or if a 1.00 inch or larger radar band crosses it; a ground report is never left off for the size of the radar estimate. The 0.50 inch band also crossed 20 other service-area cities with no ground report inside them; those are not listed because hail under one inch rarely damages asphalt shingles and a radar band that small is an estimate below that threshold. A band at or above 1.00 inch also clipped the edge of 1 further service-area city without a ground report inside it, by less than one radar grid cell of area. That is not listed: MRMS is gridded at about one kilometre and the swath it draws is displaced from where the stones landed, so an overlap that small does not establish that hail fell in the city.

Hail duration, warnings and wind

The same system produced 11 Colorado wind reports that day, the strongest 74 mph at 1 NNE Orchard. Wind damage and hail damage look different on a roof and are assessed separately.

CoCoRaHS volunteer observers logged 6 Colorado hail observations on this date, the longest running 15 minutes at Nunn 6.5 NE. That network records how long hail fell and what it damaged, which NWS storm reports do not capture.

Frequently asked questions

Red Hawk tracks every hail day across the Front Range. See our other storm reports for the rest of the 2026 season.

City-by-city reports and hail histories

• Watkins roofing & hail history
• Brighton roofing & hail history
• Fort Lupton roofing & hail history

Not sure what to look for? Start with what hail damage looks like on a roof and the Colorado hail claim guide.

Storm figures are National Weather Service Local Storm Reports for Colorado on August 22, 2026 (local time), retrieved from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet archive and de-duplicated. Radar swath analysis by ExoVzn, an independent forensic meteorology firm, using NOAA MRMS data. Impact-energy and damage-threshold figures are from published hail impact research. Storm reports indicate where hail occurred; only a physical inspection establishes whether a specific roof was damaged.