I was not prepared – Scrambling before a hail storm

Robert LarsonContributor - May 16, 2021

For months I have thought about what I would do to protect my car against a hail storm. Living in the mountains of Colorado, we can get some nasty storms and I’ve seen too many cars get totaled because of a hail storm. 

My idea was to save up the bubble mailers and cardboard boxes of my Amazon packages and tape them into some sort of soft cushion that could be quickly deployed on my car before a storm. But plans without action are useless for when the disaster comes. 

We had about a 5 minutes heads up from a family member a couple miles away of the storm and quickly ran around and were thinking about how we could protect our car. 

I took some cardboard boxes that we had saved up, and my wife grabbed some blankets and we rushed out. We threw the blankets over the hood and windshield and closed the corners of it in the door frame. Broken down cardboard boxes were placed on the roof and rear of the car and held together with packing tape. 

We took the rubber floor mats of the car and placed them on open areas along with a dog blanket and tarp that normally lives in the back seat. 

The hail came with marble sized pieces as we scrambled to Christmas wrap our car. Don’t know if the hail would have actually dented the metal or cracked the glass (sure dented my head though), but we were able to protect it. 

It’s just not worth the $500 deductible, taking time off work to take the car into the shop and pay for a rental while it’s getting worked on, and if the storm is bad enough you car can forever lose thousands of dollars and will have hail damage permanently listed on the title.

Don’t be like me. If you live in hail country, and don’t have a garage, then plan now and be ready. 

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My truck is so beat up that it could go thru a major hail storm, and you couldn’t tell the difference.  It has several cracks in the windshield already.  Now my wife’s Prius stays in the garage.

 

Now that’s a prepper’s truck. Doesn’t matter what comes it’s way.

 

Wise words Robert and thank you for the lesson. A very good thing to plan/prepare for.

If you claim hail on the roof of your home, it can jack up your insurance rates (or at least it does here and I have never had a claim). I paid for a new shingle job myself (it was going to be done anyway), but now I know that my home insurance is basically for catastrophic/total loss only.

Thanks again for sharing you and your wife’s experience and how your improvised to protect your vehicle. Well done!

 

Wow! Glad you got past that with no big issues. See? Prepper mindset…….you got it done! 

liebrecht

 

Good morning Robert,

Real good thinking and rapid response ! My compliments.

Appreciated you explainng to forum readers about direct and indirect costs and time-consuming requirements in re recovery stage.