"The hail was the size of softballs. "I was in the window, I was crying," remembers Soledad Avalos, who has lived with her husband in their home in Cozad for 35 years. "Seeing all the damage [to] the cars and the house." When the sun came up, the extent of the damage became clear. Cozad is a small town of about 4,000 people, surrounded by corn fields."
"Siding was missing, paint had been stripped away. The storm came from the northwest, and so nearly every northwest-facing window was cracked. Both the hospital and the school were in disrepair. "Those softball-sized hail stones just punched a hole through the roof membrane, and water was just pouring through the ceiling like a waterfall, or a shower," says Robert Dyer, the CEO of the Cozad Community Health System, which runs Cozad Community Hospital, the only hospital in town."
An intense hailstorm struck Cozad, Neb., on June 29, 2024, producing softball-sized hail and hurricane-force winds that destroyed vehicles, roofs, siding, and crops. Nearly every northwest-facing window cracked and virtually every vehicle parked outside suffered broken windshields. The hospital and school sustained heavy damage; the hospital’s emergency department closed for hours and repairs continued more than a year later. The hailstones punched holes through roof membranes, causing cascading interior water damage. Such hailstorms are typically hyper-local and often do not trigger federal disaster declarations. Extremely costly hailstorms have become more likely in the United States, especially across the central and eastern regions.
Read at www.npr.org
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