I sat down this morning to write my first serious post in awhile, when the wedding stationer called with the proofs for our invitations – so much for serious posting! But it’s an unusual day in Colorado, and I just have to talk about it. Where I sit, it is a beautiful spring day, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and a gentle breeze is ruffling the leaves of the trees. Big puffy clouds are drifting through the sky.
But a couple hours ago, a news alert popped up on my e-mail, and I learned that a tornado was touching down near Greeley, on the plains about 45 minutes northeast of here. My fiancé is on the road a lot for business, so I grabbed the phone and called him on his cell, and when he answered I said “Where are you? Are you on the road?”
He answered, “Yeah, we’re just outside of Greeley.”
“Oh my G-d,” I hollered, “Get the h-ll out of there! There’s a tornado blowing through!!!!!” (Pardon my language. I don’t usually swear, but the occasion seemed to merit it.)
He answered, “I know, we just drove through it.”
“WHAT??!??!!!!”
“We just drove through it. Man, you should have seen it. Telephone poles are snapped in half and blown away and piled up in fields, cars and semis are tossed on their sides, and we had golf-ball and baseball sized hail coming down. It smashed the windshields and crushed the roofs of a lot of cars. And all the power just suddenly went out. We just saw the edge of the tornado moving away as we came along – and it was a giant wall, black and green. D-mnedest thing I’ve ever seen! There must have been 3-4 inches of hail on the ground.”
Nothing like knowing your fiancé is flirting around with an active tornado. I had momentary visions of his car getting tossed on its side, and me in premature widow’s weeds.
“Well,” I said, trying to slow my heart rate, “Hurry home. And if you see a tornado coming, HEAD THE OTHER WAY!!!!”
Sometime later, I turned on the news – and learned that the tornado had kept going, and virtually destroyed the pretty little town of Windsor, a small town a little northwest of Greeley. That is just tragically sad. We usually just get skinny little twisters around here, that do only very localized damage – it might hit one side of a street, but not the other – but this one grew into a monster debris cloud and just took out the whole town when it hit. Really tragic. I pray for all those poor people who just lost their homes, or got hurt – and especially for the one soul we’ve learned about who lost his life, trying to get away from the tornado in his RV. May God rest his soul. Requiem in pacem.
And I learned that all kinds of extreme weather are going on in the state all around me, while I sit in my sunny study, in all directions. Tornadoes and golf-ball sized hail to the northeast, high winds to the south, snow and winter storm warnings to the west and southwest, and flooding to the northwest. Every possible kind of weather is happening all at once in the state right now, and the weathermen are going crazy! Colorado weather can be pretty wild and crazy – but apparently there’s never been a day like this in memory.
And I just feel really sad for the little town and people of Windsor. I hope they can rebuild. Mary, pray for us.
UPDATE: I saw Joe last night, and he told me more about the tornado. Went something like this:
But a couple hours ago, a news alert popped up on my e-mail, and I learned that a tornado was touching down near Greeley, on the plains about 45 minutes northeast of here. My fiancé is on the road a lot for business, so I grabbed the phone and called him on his cell, and when he answered I said “Where are you? Are you on the road?”
He answered, “Yeah, we’re just outside of Greeley.”
“Oh my G-d,” I hollered, “Get the h-ll out of there! There’s a tornado blowing through!!!!!” (Pardon my language. I don’t usually swear, but the occasion seemed to merit it.)
He answered, “I know, we just drove through it.”
“WHAT??!??!!!!”
“We just drove through it. Man, you should have seen it. Telephone poles are snapped in half and blown away and piled up in fields, cars and semis are tossed on their sides, and we had golf-ball and baseball sized hail coming down. It smashed the windshields and crushed the roofs of a lot of cars. And all the power just suddenly went out. We just saw the edge of the tornado moving away as we came along – and it was a giant wall, black and green. D-mnedest thing I’ve ever seen! There must have been 3-4 inches of hail on the ground.”
Nothing like knowing your fiancé is flirting around with an active tornado. I had momentary visions of his car getting tossed on its side, and me in premature widow’s weeds.
“Well,” I said, trying to slow my heart rate, “Hurry home. And if you see a tornado coming, HEAD THE OTHER WAY!!!!”
Sometime later, I turned on the news – and learned that the tornado had kept going, and virtually destroyed the pretty little town of Windsor, a small town a little northwest of Greeley. That is just tragically sad. We usually just get skinny little twisters around here, that do only very localized damage – it might hit one side of a street, but not the other – but this one grew into a monster debris cloud and just took out the whole town when it hit. Really tragic. I pray for all those poor people who just lost their homes, or got hurt – and especially for the one soul we’ve learned about who lost his life, trying to get away from the tornado in his RV. May God rest his soul. Requiem in pacem.
And I learned that all kinds of extreme weather are going on in the state all around me, while I sit in my sunny study, in all directions. Tornadoes and golf-ball sized hail to the northeast, high winds to the south, snow and winter storm warnings to the west and southwest, and flooding to the northwest. Every possible kind of weather is happening all at once in the state right now, and the weathermen are going crazy! Colorado weather can be pretty wild and crazy – but apparently there’s never been a day like this in memory.
And I just feel really sad for the little town and people of Windsor. I hope they can rebuild. Mary, pray for us.
UPDATE: I saw Joe last night, and he told me more about the tornado. Went something like this:
We were driving down the road, just leaving Greeley. The weather while we were driving up was really weird, like I’ve never seen it in Colorado: foggy and windy, really windy. I’ve never seen fog like that here – and never fog and high winds together like that. Then all of the sudden, right on the edge of town, the traffic lights just winked out. No power.
Then it began to rain torrentially hard, and the wind kicked up so high the car started rocking back and forth hard. The sky turned blackish green, and there was this enormous wall of dark grayish brown cloud in front of us. I said “Whoa, let’s pull over here and sit this one out.” We did, and moments later it started to hail, first small and then bigger and bigger, golf-ball sized. Was it ever loud, just hammering on the car.
It finally died down, the cloud started to move off, and we started to drive again. The hail was three or four inches thick, and we were driving slowly. After only a short distance, we came to a farmhouse surrounded with trees. To our amazement, all of the trees were completely stripped bare of leaves and branches – just the bare trunks sticking up. It was surreal. I said to my companion in amazement, “I think this is a tornado! I think a tornado just went through here!”
We drove on. A little further on, we started seeing cars tossed and overturned alongside the road. Windshields and rear windows were smashed in. We passed a Grand Am with front and rear windows smashed in and the hood smashed in. Then we came upon a semi that looked like it had been picked up and thrown over on its side.
As we passed, the cab window opened and the driver started to climb out. I rolled my window down and shouted, “Are you alright? Do you need help?” He said, “No, I’m alright!” So we drove on.
Then we came across a long, endless line of telephone poles and power lines – that had been snapped in half like toothpicks and thrown into a field, as far as we could see. We passed more flipped cars and torn up trees. People were standing around all over, just staring.
Then we saw a guy crawling out of a deep ditch, dragging something behind him. We slowed, and saw he was pulling a motorcycle up behind him. I rolled my window down again, and called “Are you alright? Do you need help?” He answered, “No, I’m alright – but I just went for the ride of my life! Flew 150 feet or so through the air!"
We realized only later that one of the side roads we passed was the road into the campground where the guy in the RV had died. If only we had known – we might have been able to help him.
We were going to go to Ft. Collins on another business stop, but it looked like the tornado was moving that direction, so we decided to go to Loveland instead, a little further south. After we came out and were heading back down to town, it started to hail hard again, more golf-ball sized hail, and I said “There’s the edge of the storm up ahead! Keep going – we can outrun it!” We did – and were we ever relieved to get back to the office. But then we heard about what happened to Windsor. Whew. I’ve never seen such a day in my life.
