A hailstorm in Estes Park on Wednesday night made roads impassable and trapped several vehicles.

“Who had ‘Elkhorn Avenue impassable in July’ on their 2022 Bingo cards,” the Estes Park Police Department wrote in a Facebook post. 

The storm began around 10 p.m. and lasted between 10 and 20 minutes, dropping a substantial amount of pea size hail across downtown, said Greg Hanson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Boulder.

No this is not winter in Estes… this is what’s left of last night’s 10pm hailstorm in downtown which needed to be plowed!!⁦@NWSBoulder⁩ #esteswx #cowx pic.twitter.com/NJVaDC6GFc

— EstesParkWx (@weatherelated) July 28, 2022

Pictures on social media appear to show mountains of hail along the streets of Estes Park, but Hanson said these photos can be misleading because the hail was carried along with the rain down gutters and to storm drains.

“It didn’t hail a foot,” he said.

Kate Rusch, a spokeswoman for Estes Park, said the town had to plow several areas downtown because of the large concentration of hail, but most of it had melted by 10:30 a.m. Thursday.

“We generally have some big storms each year, but this was definitely something else,” Rusch said.

Rusch said town officials were assessing the damage and that it looked like some of the town’s gardens bore the brunt of the impact.