CLEVELAND — Golf-ball sized hail pelted several parts of northeast Ohio this week, including the Solon Police Department.

What You Need To Know

This week’s strong storms are taking a costly toll on some parts of northern Ohio

Wednesday’s hail pounded cars, dented hoods and even broke windshields and sunroofs

More than half of the vehicles in one police department and hundreds of vehicles at a car dealership are being impacted

Lieutenant Bill Vajdich is the department’s public information officer. He said dozens of their vehicles are damaged, along with the building that houses them. 

“We maintain a fleet of about 30 cars in Solon, and 20 of those 30 were impacted in some way, shape or form,” he said.

Valdich said these repairs could take some time and come with a big price tag. 

“It’s thousands, probably tens of thousands, if not more, by the end of it,” he said. “You know, with a windshield, you got other little metric systems that are hooked into that just… from the car manufacturers themselves.”

Down the street, the Davis Automotive Group is dealing with even greater devastation.

Taylor Davis is the president of the car dealership, which he said no longer has any cars to sell.

“Well, luckily, this is why you have insurance, right? But, you know, total value of inventory between the new and the used vehicles. We’ve got over 350 vehicles on our lot right now that are affected. Probably in excess of $20 million, I would say,” Davis said.

He said the group is now working with manufacturers to restock its car supply as soon as possible and that taking cars of clients remains the group’s top priority.

“I need to go find alternative transportation for all of my service loaners that were damaged so I can continue to service my clients,” Davis said. “… I hope people understand what we’re going through, and their understanding of our situation and their patient, because obviously, I never could imagine something like this happening.”

And Vajdich said the storm damage isn’t stoping the department from serving the community.

“This is not going to affect our ability to respond to calls for service in town,” Vajdich said. “We’ll avoid driving some cars. But worse comes to worse, if we really needed every one of them, we would use them and it would be fine.”