Unleashing Hail

Weather’s fickle nature is something farmers must endure and Anne Cure has survived plenty of storms since she planted her first crops in 2005 on a piece of land just northeast of Boulder. The area around her acreage at Cure Organic Farm is largely open space, farms, and ranches with plenty of windrows, fields, and grassland. The views of the Rockies come standard, too, and on most summer afternoons, she can watch clouds gather above the mountains. Not just the sweet, docile cumulus type—the fluffy ones in which you found boat or bunny shapes as a child—but the cumulonimbus variety, otherwise known as thunderstorm clouds. These behemoths can stack several miles high, and instead of white, they turn shades of gunmetal, slate, and ash. Inside, they carry the potential for destruction: lightning, rain, tornados, and hail.

There were a lot of those clouds in 2018—some would say too many. The first storm