TORNADOS in Northern Colorado

The morning started out gloomy! The air was heavy and humid. Not really a normal feeling for a Colorado morning. I had to open the window shades to let some light in to the house so I wouldn’t have to turn lights on to see where I was walking!

I head to Longmont after dropping Ashleigh off at school and the sky starts to spit its tiny little droplets onto my vehicle as I approach work. I sit at my desk, read 9news and see the littel alert that there WILL be sever weather in northern and eastern Colorado. Common lately!

My employers were golfing and the associate in the office hasn’t been very busy lately finding STUPID things to complain above, like over the evening hours a coffee pot was left on and the grounds weren’t dumped out of the top. Something that I do at the end of the day, but forgot because I was tired and ready to go home! I do think that I turned the pot off, but I guess it was overlooked! The guys gave us [Heidi and I] permission to go to breakfast since they left us with such a nitpicking, helpless person!! :D

We go to breakfast, head back to the office and shortly after Diana heads in! She tells us how the skies opened up on her and her Dad on their way back from Mead for a social breakfast.

I really didn’t think anything of it as it is normal to have areas in Colorado be a mess in one area while others are not as bad!

Heidi and I head to Wal-Mart for lunch to obtain health and beauty products. It is raining a little bit still and the skies North of town are very dark! The town sirens go off and I try to hear what they are saying while we are drving, but cannot. We pull into a parking lot south of Wal-mart where there were a lot of people standing under a bank drive up to ask what the sirens were screaming! One lady says, “It’s a tornado warning!” I point to the sky above Wal-mart to show them that the clouds are rotating in circles as they comment about going back inside.

Excited and freaked I chase the clouds to the upper most part of Collyer Street, where you can no longer get onto HWY 66, and we watched the clouds over Wal-Mart circle and get closer to the ground!

We then headed to Wal-Mart as it looked like the clouds had dissipated. We get into Wal-Mart and the employees there usher us to the back of the store. We tell them that the clouds have passed, but they cannot allow us to be in the store because of the risk of the skylights blowing out and harming customers. So we head to the back of the store where they do not allow us to stand in the hall, but make us go back even more to back stock. I look up and guess what I see, more skylights! UGH!

We were ready to be out of there when the all clear finally came! We head back to the office to discover the tornado hit Windsor, one town directly north of where I live, and the other tornados that touched down OH SO CLOSE TO MI CASA!

I tried calling the schools out in Johnstown and Milliken as both Luke and Ashleigh were in school and I couldn't get through to either of them! I watched the 9news webpage even closer than usual to make sure that they were ok! Jeff then called to tell me that he would be going out to Johnstown to get the kids to make sure they were ok!

I spoke to Luke shortly after 3 p.m. He said he didn't hear or see anything and they did the usual drill! No excitement for him!

When I spoke to Ashleigh at 4 p.m. she told me that they had to cancel all of their special acitivites and that they were put in the Library where it was the safest place to be for them. They didn't have electricity and were not allowed to go to their after school care, ABC. I don't think she realizes really what was going on with them, which in her case is a good thing!

When I got home, I discovered that I had a few tree branches down, which is the norm for any storm that rages through my neck of the woods, so I picked them up and put them in a pile near a flower garden to be hauled to the backyard. I checked the rest of the house and then went back outside to work in the yard as usual. Especially since there wasn't any light in the house.

My neighbor across the street asked me over for a drink, so I took a break from the yard work I was doing to get the scoop on what the weather was like while I was at work. She said that it was pretty crazy, but that she worked out in her yard between the systems that moved through town.

She heard just before I got home that a tornado touched down at CR 13 and HWY 60 which is about a three quarters of a mile to the west of my house! She said that they had the road closed down there, but I don't recall it being closed down when I drove home!?

I was without electricity until around 6 a.m. this morning. When I flipped the switch to the kitchen light I was releaved when it turned on!

We are currently in the clear. Heidi just told me there was another Tornado Watch in effect for the same counties in Northern Colorado until 7 this evening! Here we go again!