It was about 6:15 a.m. when I got back to the hotel after dropping Ellyn at the airport. I flipped on the local news and the crew was talking about the unusual "stickiness" in the air outside. "I don't know if I've ever felt anything like this before," the anchor said.
I went back to sleep and woke up at about 10. I packed and headed north on I-25 with the hopes of making it to Cheyenne, Wyoming, to get Pam serviced and then find a place to camp out.
Tuning into the local NPR station just outside of Denver, the harsh squeak of the Emergency Alert System cut into Fresh Air. At first, I was angry, thinking it was a test, knowing from a few years of initiating EAS tests at KBVR that tests should always happen in between shows. Also, being from Oregon, you never expect an actual EAS broadcast. But this one was real. The voice broke in, saying there was a tornado warning for the northeast section of Colorado in effect until 2 p.m. It was in no way a true warning for what was about to happen.
As I went north, the sky went from blue to dark black. Looking up through the windshield, I saw the clouds were moving very fast. Things, perhaps, showed signs of a hairy situation.
As I continued on, not realizing what was happening around me, hail started to fall out of the sky. Just outside Fort Collins, the hail fell in golf-ball sized chunks. The wind was layered, with the grass whipping violently to the left, the birds struggling, and loosing, against winds blowing the opposite direction, and the clouds moving the same direction as the wind on the ground. Out my window, funnel shapes started to form about ten miles off in the distance. "Huh," I thought. "This might get interesting."
Traffic had stopped completely. Then, I saw it. It looked like nothing I have ever seen before. A dark, swirling cloud. The funnel shapes moved around it like sentential guards. Now, I know it was a mile-wide tornado. Then, it looked like a storm front with gray beams shooting out. Luckily — even though it felt very unlucky at the time, it felt trapped — being stopped in traffic allowed most of the hail to hit Pam's fiberglass top and not my windshield. Either way, I was nervous. Flipping the radio back on, a local DJ was giving updates between interviewing a local folk musician. His nonchalance was almost offensive, seeing that there was an ominous spinning black cloud was right outside my window, moving past at a ferocious speed.
Sitting there in traffic, I pulled my break and flipped off the engine. Just then, a forceful blast of wind rattled Pam, my head turned as it blasted past. There on the other side of the freeway, where traffic was moving along, a brown tractor trailer shook then crumpled onto its side into the ditch. It blew over as if it were paper. Like a toy, it was tossed into the air.
"Okay, turning around," I told myself.
Traffic started to move, and I finally saw the stop was due to a series of power poles down and broken, snapped like toothpicks, hanging from limp lines stretched across the road.
Moving along, I went another mile before I found a offramp to turn around at. The radio clicked on again. The tornado was passing through Windsor, ripping roofs off houses. I looked to see the exit name. Windsor. "Shit! Turn around, turn around." (Sorry, not going to lie. When there is a tornado blowing down everything around you, you swear.)
That I did, then, passing the truck crumpled in the ditch, I pressed down on the throttle. I caught up with a Wal-Mart semi.
As I moved up to the truck, wind shook everything, lifting the rear wheel off the road and moving the trailer a few feet to the side. I pushed Pam as hard as she could go, moving past the truck. The driver looked worried, to offer up another understatement.
I finally moved out of the storm, pulling over in Loveland and snagging a hotel room. At the desk, a hurried man on his cell phone was telling his brother "mother is safe. She's in the car. I pulled her off the front porch, she was clinging to the rail being tossed around by the wind. I'm headed back as soon as I get into her room."
By the time I got to my room, the news told me the tornado had moved passed Windsor, left the ground and was on its way to Wyoming, where it would later touch down again.
In the end, the one-mile-wide tornado blew at 135 mph over 35 miles of northeast Colorado. One man died in his RV — while camping. At a site I though about.
The area is officially in a state of emergency. The governor dropped by in a military blackhawk.
I'm safe, and in bad need of a day without an adventure.
Well, I’m glad you’re safe, but what a great story!
When I heard about the hail last night, I was seriously worried about Pam! I feel like she is my sister.
I went through a similar situation driving South through Indiana. I caught weather reports on AM radio as I was bored from terrible Indiana FM-ness. I assumed I was getting the report from a far-off land, as I didn’t recogize any of the towns. Then the towns started sounding familiar, and it turned out the tornado was coming toward me, on my path, and i was due to make “contact” at about the time of the next exit. My saviors were a lead-foot and a salvation army in rural Indiana that happened to have a basement.