When employees of four campus greenhouses arrived at work Friday morning, they were greeted with an unexpected workload.

An early morning hailstorm rained down, causing dents and dings to vehicles, tearing down tree limbs and causing an estimated $200,000 worth of damage to campus greenhouses, said Bob Currie, assistant director of facilities services for Facilities Planning and Management.

Four greenhouses saw the worst of the damage: The USDA Greenhouse, the Agronomy Greenhouse and the two Plant Pathology Greenhouses.

David Volkers, manager of the Plant Pathology Greenhouses, arrived to the greenhouse Friday morning to find shards and small pieces of glass scattered throughout the greenhouses, he said.

“When it hits, it breaks,” Volkers said. Volkers, along with four others, spent the day sweeping, picking and removing pieces of glass from the floor, plants and pots throughout the greenhouses, Volkers said. Partially broken pieces of the glass roof also had to be removed for safety reasons.

“It hailed at 4:30 a.m., and I decided to come in at 5 [a.m.],” Volkers said. “It was a 12-hour day of pokin’ glass.” Volkers estimated around 30 to 40 percent of the panes were broken on the Plant Pathology Greenhouses, totaling an estimated 400 panes.

Tom Jacobsen, manager of the USDA Greenhouse, estimated around 100 broken panes throughout the USDA greenhouse.

The open areas in the roof may pose a host of problems to the plants and facilities before the panes are replaced, Jacobsen said.

“If it rains, it could flood things up,” Jacobsen said. “If the sun is shining in, and it is 100 degrees outside, it is going to be 100 degrees in here.”

Boards have been placed on some broken panes to help control the air flow, Jacobsen said.

Allowing hot air into the greenhouses could be discouraging to some of the plant life in the greenhouse because the USDA Greenhouse has no cooling system, he said.

All in all, Jacobsen admitted the timing of the storm was fortunate in some respects.

“We got lucky,” he said. “We were in-between experiments. It could have been a catastrophe.”

Other hail damages to campus property include dents and dings to approximately 60 university vehicles and minor damage to trees and shrubs.