Short answer: Yes. A National Weather Service trained spotter measured 1-inch hail three miles east-northeast of Greenland in Douglas County at 3:07 p.m. on Wednesday, August 26, 2026. Third-party aggregators logged ten more Douglas and Arapahoe County reports that evening, the largest 1.25 inches near Castle Pines, but those carry weaker sourcing than the Weather Service report.
Wednesday afternoon, August 26, 2026, a slow-moving storm crawled southeast across the Palmer Divide and put hail on the ground in Douglas County. Later that evening a second round moved through the Castle Pines corridor and out toward Arapahoe Park. It was the smallest of the three August storms and it got almost no coverage — which is exactly why it is worth writing down while the record is still fresh.
We are a Parker-based roofing team, so this one landed in our own county again. Below is every report we can source, ranked by how much weight it actually deserves. The number a door-knocker is most likely to quote you is not the strongest one on the list.
Was There Hail in Douglas County on August 26, 2026?
Yes. The National Weather Service office in Boulder logged a Local Storm Report — product NWUS55 KBOU 262123, issued at 3:23 p.m. MDT — recording 1-inch hail three miles east-northeast of Greenland, in Douglas County, at 3:07 p.m., from a trained spotter.
Greenland is an unincorporated spot on the Palmer Divide where US 85 and I-25 run close together, south of Larkspur. That report is the highest-confidence piece of evidence from the entire day, for one reason: a trained spotter is a person who was standing there looking at the ice.
Seven minutes later, at 3:14 p.m., the same office issued a Special Weather Statement covering Elbert and central and eastern Douglas counties above 6,000 feet. It described a strong thunderstorm near Greenland moving southeast at 10 mph, listed the hazard as wind gusts up to 50 mph and penny size hail, and listed the source as radar indicated.
How Big Was the Hail — Penny, Quarter or Half Dollar?
Three different answers are circulating for the same afternoon. Here they are with their sourcing attached, strongest last to first:
- Quarter, 1 inch — the trained-spotter report east-northeast of Greenland at 3:07 p.m., in a National Weather Service Local Storm Report. This is a measurement. It is the strongest evidence of the day.
- Half dollar, 1.25 inches — the largest size in a third-party storm-report aggregator, logged around Castle Pines and near Arapahoe Park that evening. Aggregator entries are genuinely useful, but they are not Weather Service products, and several of the August 26 entries are flagged by the aggregator itself as having their times estimated from radar rather than logged by an observer.
- Penny, 0.75 inch — the Weather Service's own warning text at 3:14 p.m., explicitly radar-indicated. That is a forecast of what the storm could produce, not a measurement of what fell.
Stone size is only one of the inputs on your roof anyway. Wind speed, the angle the stones came in at, and how old and brittle the shingles already were all matter — which is why two houses on the same block routinely come out differently. If you want to know what you are actually looking for, we wrote up what hail damage looks like on a Colorado roof.
Which Towns Had Reports on August 26?
Eleven Colorado hail reports were logged that day in the third-party aggregator we checked on September 2 — seven in Douglas County, four in Arapahoe County. Read the list as a storm track, not as a list of damaged towns:
- Near Greenland, Douglas County — 1 inch at 3:07 p.m., trained spotter, per the Weather Service. The closest town we serve is Larkspur.
- Around Castle Pines, Douglas County — a cluster of five reports between 6:00 and 6:05 p.m. ranging from 1 inch to 1.25 inches, logged to the north, northwest and east-southeast of the city. Aggregator-sourced. We work throughout Castle Pines.
- Near The Pinery, Douglas County — 1 inch around 6:20 p.m. Aggregator-sourced, with the time estimated from radar. Franktown sits just southeast of there.
- Arapahoe Park and out toward Foxfield, Arapahoe County — three reports of 1 to 1.25 inches between 6:08 and 6:11 p.m. and one more at 7:12 p.m. That corridor sits east of Centennial and southeast of Aurora. Aggregator-sourced, times estimated from radar.
Notice what every one of those entries has in common: they are all offsets. Two miles northwest of Castle Pines. Five miles south-southeast of Arapahoe Park. Three miles east-northeast of Greenland. None of them is a measurement taken on a specific street. That is normal for hail reporting, and it is the reason a colored blob drawn over your neighborhood on somebody's map is not evidence about your roof.
Does a Report Near Your Town Mean Your Roof Is Damaged?
No. A hail report is a single observation: ice of a certain size, at a certain place, at a certain time. Colorado hail falls in narrow bands, and a report three miles away is context, not a verdict on your shingles.
The honest answer, more often than people expect, is that the roof is fine. We say that out loud on inspections and we put it in writing either way. If you would rather learn to read the report record yourself first, how to read storm reports without panicking walks through it.
What Should You Do Now, a Week Later?
- Write down the date and rough time — Wednesday, August 26: mid-afternoon on the Divide, early evening in the Castle Pines and Arapahoe Park corridor. That detail matters later far more than people expect.
- Look from the ground: gutters, downspouts, metal roof vents, AC fins, and granules washed into the splash blocks. Soft metal dents before shingles bruise. Do not get on the roof.
- Photograph anything you find with something in frame for scale.
- If the soft metal is clean, your roof most likely is too — and that is a perfectly good place to stop.
- If you want it confirmed, get a roof-level inspection from someone who will put it in writing that the roof is undamaged when it is.
- Do not sign anything at the door under time pressure. Read how to vet a roofer and spot a storm chaser first.
There is no rush manufactured by a calendar here. Colorado gives you considerably longer than most door-knockers imply, and we laid out both clocks — the one in your policy and the one in the statute — in how long you have to file a hail claim in Colorado. If you do find damage, how to document it for insurance covers what to capture and when.
Has Anything Hit the Service Area Since August 26?
Not that we can verify, and we checked on September 2. The Weather Service's severe thunderstorm warning on August 30 covered northern Gilpin County, northwestern Jefferson County and southwestern Boulder County — Rollinsville, Nederland, Eldora, Eldorado Springs. That is the foothills, not the towns we serve. August 31's activity was near Kim, in the far southeast corner of the state.
So as of this writing, August 26 is still the most recent verified hail event inside our service area. The two before it were August 15 in Douglas County and August 13 in Arapahoe County. Three events in fourteen days is a lot for one corridor — if you have not looked at your roof since the first one, one look covers all three.
Why This Storm Is Not in the NOAA Database Yet
Because NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information publish the Storm Events Database on a multi-month lag. August 2026 will not appear there for some time. That is expected rather than a gap in the data — and anyone showing you a NOAA record for August 2026 today is showing you something else.
What NOAA does have is the long record, and it is worth more than any single afternoon. Our Storm Almanac publishes it county by county: 242 hail reports in Douglas County between 2000 and 2025, with stones as large as 3 inches, and 43 of those reports in the month of August alone. One storm is not a pattern. On the Palmer Divide, this is the pattern — why Douglas County keeps getting hit goes through the whole record.
Want the data first? Open the Storm Almanac. Want someone on the roof? Book a free, no-pressure inspection — and if the roof is fine, we will tell you that.
Sources: NWS Denver/Boulder Local Storm Report NWUS55 KBOU 262123, issued 3:23 p.m. MDT August 26, 2026; NWS Denver Special Weather Statement issued 3:14 p.m. MDT August 26, 2026; a third-party Colorado storm-report aggregator listing for 08/26/2026, read September 2, 2026, whose displayed clock for the Greenland entry runs an hour ahead of the Weather Service product, so the time above is the Weather Service's; long-term counts from the NOAA NCEI Storm Events Database, 2000 to 2025, via our Storm Almanac. Last verified September 2, 2026.