Knee-high on Fourth of July: Hail Storm Blankets Ariz. Town with Ice [VIDEO]

Thursday morning residents of Santa Rosa, N.M. woke to a wintry scene: the entire town blanketed in white after a massive hail storm dumped piles of ice more than a knee high, making for a unseasonal start to the Fourth of July.

The hour-long storm occurred Wednesday night, dumping nickle- to golf ball-sized hail on the town of 2,800 people, where it reportedly accumulated as high as two feet. 

The storm caused considerable damage to property in the town. Roberta Blea told local news station KRQE News 13 that the falling hail was so loud that she did not realize that her family's carport collapsed on all three of the cars beneath it.

"I looked out and it was just raining hail," Blea told KRQE. "I had never seen that happen. I just never even expected this much destruction. It's devastating."

The Weather Channel reports that Santa Rosa, in northeastern New Mexico, lies in what's known as "Hail Alley," a swath of land along the high plains of Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and the Texas panhandle. Large hail falls in the region at least three times a year, often in late spring and early summer.

Large accumulations of hail on the ground can be attributed to the elevation of the regions. Santa Rosa lies at 4,616 feet above sea level, giving falling hail little chance to melt before it hits land.

While much of the United States is sweating through intense summer heat, a freak hail storm might seem odd. But meteorologists report them happening rather frequently with even bigger hail storms in nearby regions accumulating as much as several yards of hail on the ground.

About a three hours drive east from Santa Rosa, in Dumas, Texas, an April 2012 supercell storm dumped torrential rain and hail, which piled in drifts as much as 10 feet high, the Weather Channel reported.

In August, 2004 hail storm in Clayton, N.M. (about 170 miles north of Santa Rosa) produced 16-foot-high "hail glaciers" that took more than a month to melt, according to the Weather Channel.