Epic Denver Hail Storm Leaves Front Range Reeling. LOTS Of Damage Reported

A Denver area woman holds a giant hailstone Monday.

An epic hail storm swept along much of the Front Range in Colorado Monday, and the Denver metro area was among the areas hit hard. 

Big hail happens from time to time in the High Plains, but when it hits a metropolitan area, the total amount of damage can be worse than in a tornado.

The damage in any one area from hail is almost always less than tornadoes but the damage is more spread out, so the totals go up.

The Denver metro hail in some areas was the size of baseballs or even a little bigger.  There are dramatic videos to watch at the bottom of this post.

Countless cars were dented with windows smashed out. Thousands of homes and businesses had smashed windows, ruined siding and roofs that suddenly needed to be replaced.

One of the worst hit spots was the Colorado Mill mall, where hail smashed in skylights to let pouring rain in. Stores were flooded, the mall was evacuated, and shoppers leaving the mall found their cars with windows smashed out, says the Denver Post. 

If you're in Denver with a hail damaged car, good luck getting it fixed. The Denver Post says all the auto glass dealers now have full voice mails an overloaded email accounts from the torrent or people desperate to get their windshields fixed.

Hailstorms usually cause a lot of damage. The Denver Channel says Colorado's Front Range, including Denver, typically sees about $25 million in insurance claims from hail damage annually. This will be far worse, though damage estimates for this aren't in yet.

The most damaging hail storm in Colorado was in July, 1990, which caused $1.1 billion (with a "B" in damages. That figure is adjusted for inflation to 2015.

Watch this cool timelapse of the severe thunderstorm and hail taking over downtown Denver:



In this brief video, hail abruptly takes out the back window of a car:



Here's hail smashing through the windows of a Denver house:



And here's the chaos in Wheat Ridge, Colorado as house windows shatter and car alarms blare in the hail: