On the way home to Grand Junction, we encountered a little storm. It was raining as we started up Monarch Pass, the rain got heavier until it turned into hail. The hail quickly started sticking to the road and my car was wanting to slide all over. Luckily I was able to pull off the road at the turn for Old Monarch Pass. Many cars did the same thing. Then a truck pulling a 5th wheel trailer pulled off right in front of me. A minivan pulling a pop-up trailer behind him was spinning his wheels and ended up stopping on the road. After the hail stopped the minivan called for a snow plow (in JULY??). After about 10 minutes everyone was able to get going again. We were the last car to get back on the road because I wanted to be safe!
Looks like wintertime!
It was actually kind-of beautiful!
I would guess there was 1-3" that fell in probably 5 minutes! Madelyn looked frightened but when I told her it was called hail she seemed to relax (she just wanted to know the name of it).
Cars were backed up pretty far down the road.
Luckily they were fairly small pieced of hail.
A stream quickly formed on the side of the road.
East-bound cars made tracks and that's how the west-bound cars first got going.
The top of the car right before we drove off. I made a "hailball" for Madelyn to touch. She loved having me get her a piece of hail and she tried to throw it out the window (it was the first time she'd ever had the window all the way down). The temperature was 37 when we started going. It took about 20 minutes for all the ice to melt off the windshield wipers. CRAZY!! Only in Colorado!