Severe Storms across Denver Metro
Earlier this week, severe thunderstorms erupted across the I-25 corridor in Colorado and southeastern Wyoming. NWS WFO Boulder, CO, messaged the significance of the event to the general public via social media, in that large hail, damaging winds and isolated tornadoes could be possible throughout Monday, 1 June 2026.
In the early afternoon, convection initiated along the higher elevations and foothills of Colorado, then traversed across the I-25 corridor and entered the eastern plains. The severe storms produced significant swaths of hail across the Denver Metro area, where social media videos captured the hail accumulations that covered roadways and neighborhoods.
Additionally, Storm Prediction Center (SPC) storm reports contained numerous hail reports of 1 inch or greater across the Denver Metro area, including observations of golf ball sized hail.
GOES-19 observed the active weather throughout 1 June 2026. The high temporal resolution imagery (and GLM lightning detections) captured early morning storms along the eastern Colorado plains and western Kansas, then a subsequent line of storms developed across the Colorado high elevations and foothills at ~18Z, 1 June 2026.
GOES-19 ABI Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB and GLM from ~13Z, 1 June 2026 to ~00Z, 2 June 2026
Zooming into the Denver Metro area at 0.5 kilometers, the GOES Day Cloud Phase Distinction (DCPD) RGB imagery captured a hail swath in the wake of the storms. The hail swath, although faint, is seen in green pixels, where there was a brief period of clear skies at ~2106Z, 1 June 2026. In the imagery animation below, the hail swath can be seen within the orange rectangle.
GOES-19 ABI Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB from 20Z-23Z, 1 June 2026
NOAA-21 and NOAA-20 VIIRS also captured the storms across Colorado at 375-m spatial resolution. The VIIRS DCPD RGB imagery did not observe the hail swath, as the VIIRS overpasses passed over the domain prior to the detection of the surface feature.
VIIRS Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB from 1938Z and 2030Z, 1 June 2026