Windsor, Colo. tornado and my peeps in action
First off, I am very relieved that my former colleagues at the Loveland Reporter-Herald in Colorado are safe. A half-mile-wide wedge tornado bore down on the town of Windsor, Colo. Thursday morning and carved a wide swath of damage. Only one person was killed and it’s a miracle more were not taken. I believe this is a testament to the strength of our early warning systems and to the construction quality of our buildings.
Stormtrack storm chasers (here and here) had been watching the supercell (posts include technical jargon, also with great pics of radar with the hook echo visible), which had a rare northwest track, since it formed. It put on quite a show, gouging a path through Windsor and then headed toward Fort Collins.
Loveland was also under tornado warning for some time, and staff at the Reporter-Herald huddled in the downstairs hallway for about 15-20 minutes. (Guys, I hate to say it, but if that tornado was anything above an EF-3 that hallway isn’t going to cut it.)
—EDIT: Adding info from Jeff Masters’ Wunderblog. Masters says the damage appeared to be at least EF-3. Check out the great pictures and explanations of the hook echo on his site (animation of reflectivity here).—
Based on the damage from aerial shots from the Rocky Mountain News, Windsor has a long road to recovery ahead of them.
Some incredible video from KUSA is posted on the CNN site. Halfway through the video you can see egg-sized hail pelting the reporter, who is on an overpass of US 34 west of Greeley (I think?). Check out the other videos on that page as well. Just watching the video gives me chills and makes me thankful that Loveland didn’t sustain a direct hit from this monster.
A friend of mine works at the Eastman-Kodak plant in Windsor:
Since we work in a factory which is essentially a big concrete box, we were quite safe, and the noise was minimal. A bunch of us dumb asses, however, were watching it come in front of the big plate glass windows in the office, thinking it really wasn’t coming. It’s kind of a deer in the headlights thing. As soon as the hail hit, the lights went out, and the sirens sounded, we beat feet for the shelter. About two minutes later it went though.
It lasted maybe two minutes, but of course it felt like ten years. When we came out, there was a huge hole ripped in the roof of the warehouse, and there’s a smaller one in the office. Water was running down the back stairs like a waterfall. We could smell gas, there were many leaks in the area, although I don’t think it was actually at our plant.
…
The town is a wreck. It looks like the tornado passed next to our plant - a direct hit and I think I would have still been okay, but I think that shelter (the women’s bathroom ) would have been all that was standing.
Poynter has a good article on using Twitter and Tweetscan for news updates, receiving and sending. Other news sites with video include the Greeley Tribune and the Coloradoan.
When I worked at the RH, I was very much aware that the area is on the edge of a tornadic zone. Colorado does not evoke many images of tornado activity, but Weld County has the most tornado hits every year, mostly due to its size, of any county in the state. Because I’m a huge weather geek, I would’ve had the NWS Denver radar loop up on my computer screen, I checked the NWS storm prediction center every day. I might have tried to go out and get tornado coverage if someone didn’t knock sense into me first.
Colorado weather can change in a second as this storm shows. It was a beautiful sunny day by all accounts before the tornado rolled through. You can bet I’ll be following updates on the area.