Raton, NM Hail Storm – June 2025

What Happened

A severe hail storm crossed the Raton, NM area on June 7, 2025, and field reports verified 2-inch stones during the late afternoon and evening. The storm produced a long run of hail alerts from 2:20 PM through 11:43 PM MDT.

The first alert came at 2:20 PM MDT with 1-inch hail confidence from dual-polarization radar. Spotter verification followed at 2:56 PM MDT, also for 1-inch hail. By 4:11 PM MDT, hail had increased to 1.5 inches with radar and spotter support. A 4:32 PM MDT storm chaser report described ping-pong ball size hail, which matched the 1.5-inch range.

The storm remained active into the evening. Radar and spotter verification supported 1.25-inch hail at 4:50 PM MDT, then 2-inch hail at 5:29 PM MDT. Additional verified reports followed at 5:33 PM MDT for 1-inch hail, then at 6:11 PM, 6:12 PM, 6:15 PM, 6:44 PM, and 6:59 PM MDT with hail ranging from 1.25 to 1.75 inches.

Ground reports lined up with that sequence. At 5:55 PM MDT, mPING reports and a separate observer near Sedan described golf ball hail. At 6:40 PM MDT, hail at Pasamonte ranch was also reported at golf ball size. Later spotter reports at 6:16 PM MDT and 7:20 PM MDT confirmed 1.75-inch and 2-inch stones. Radar continued to detect smaller hail signatures after dark, including 1-inch, 1.25-inch, and 1.5-inch alerts through 11:43 PM MDT.

Damage Assessment

The field reports point to widespread hail loading across the Raton metro and nearby rural corridors. The repeated golf ball reports near Sedan and Pasamonte ranch, along with the 2-inch spotter-verified reports at 7:20 PM MDT, show a storm that produced more than one round of damaging hail at the surface.

The mix of hail sizes matters here. Multiple reports clustered in the 1.75-inch range, with a later 2-inch confirmation, suggest the most exposed structures, vehicles, and crops likely took the heaviest impact where the core of the storm passed. The earlier 1.5-inch report from the storm chaser and the 1.25-inch and 1-inch alerts around Raton indicate hail size varied over the life of the storm rather than staying fixed in one band.

The damage picture is strongest where observers named specific places. Sedan, Pasamonte ranch, and the broader Raton area each had verified hail reports. That pattern points to a corridor of hail impacts instead of a single isolated cell. Smaller dime-size hail reported at 7:29 PM MDT shows the storm also shed weaker margins after the main hail core had already passed.

Roof impacts, denting on exposed vehicles, and broken or stressed crops are consistent with the report pattern in this event. The data do not show a single uniform hail swath. They show repeated hail production across multiple rounds of the storm.

What Contractors Should Know

This event covered the Raton area and nearby locations over many hours, with the strongest verified hail reports coming from late afternoon into early evening. Crews working the metro should focus on neighborhoods and properties that line up with the verified report times between 5:29 PM and 7:20 PM MDT. Those are the windows where the largest stones were confirmed.