HAIL AND THE BUILDING ENVELOPE: WHAT COLORADO KEEPS TEACHING DESIGNERS
Honeycomb is our favorite structure for a reason. A cellular core spreads a point load across the whole panel, which is how a product that is 80% air can still be self-structural. Nature arrived at the same answer long before we did. The engineering lesson is simple: geometry, not mass, is what absorbs impact.
HAIL ALLEY IS A DESIGN CONSTRAINT
Nowhere is that lesson tested more often than the corridor just east of the Rocky Mountains. The Front Range of Colorado sees more large hail events than almost anywhere in North America, and the insurance losses run to billions in a bad year. On June 1, 2026, a storm dropped hail of around an inch and a quarter across parts of Highlands Ranch and the south Denver suburbs. Storms like that one are not anomalies there. They are the operating environment, and envelopes should be specified accordingly.
THE ROOF TAKES THE FIRST HIT
Facades mostly take glancing blows. The roof takes hail square on, which is why impact ratings matter most at the top of the building. In residential work that means UL 2218 Class 4 shingles, which resist a 2 inch steel ball dropped from 20 feet, and which many Colorado insurers reward with premium discounts. It also means checking the roof after every serious storm, not just when a stain shows up on a ceiling. Bruised mats and cracked fiberglass can leak months later, long after a claim window has narrowed. After hail of an inch or larger, the sensible move is a documented inspection from a roofing company in Highlands Ranch or whichever market the building sits in, with photographs that can support an insurance claim if damage is found.
WHAT CELLULAR STRUCTURES TEACH
For designers, the takeaway travels well beyond hail alley. Impact resistance is a system property. A Class 4 shingle over a rotten deck fails; a strong panel in a weak frame fails. The envelope performs as a whole or it does not perform at all, which is the same thing honeycomb has been quietly demonstrating in our exterior glazing for years.
Blog feed