Wind Leaves Damage and Power Outages

By Emily Tienken, Daily Camera, Boulder, Colo.

Jun. 8–Toppled trees and snapped branches littered Boulder County on Thursday, businesses remained dark well into the day and crews scaled ladders to restore damaged power lines after unseasonably strong winds blew across the Front Range overnight.

Wind gusts Thursday morning hit a high of 92 mph near Rocky Flats, along Colo. 93, said Matt Kelsch, a Boulder meteorologist.

The harsh wind was caused by a massive storm that passed Colorado to the north: creating tornadoes in Wyoming and the Dakotas, Kelsch said. Such fast and furious wind in Boulder County is more typical during the winter.

“The difference here was that the trees were all leafed out, so the damage was a lot greater,” Kelsch said.

Statewide, gusts were clocked as high as 101 mph in Loveland.

Power outages left huge chunks of Boulder dark Wednesday night, and some parts of the county could stay without power until 6 a.m. today, said Xcel Energy spokeswoman Ethnie Groves.

Xcel crews weren’t the only ones cleaning up. Homeowners dragged branches from their yards Thursday, while city workers were dispatched to remove snapped limbs and debris from roads and public areas .For some residents, it was a small matter of gathering twigs and pine cones.

But for Betsy Novak and Dave Winter, the damage was worse. A 50-foot-tall maple tree was uprooted sometime between midnight and 1 a.m. Thursday and crushed both of their cars, which were parked outside their Boulder home.

As she surveyed the totaled cars, Novak said she was just glad no one was in them. She estimated the tree had been standing since 1911, when their house was built, and she said the damage could have been a lot worse if the tree had fallen in a different direction and landed on their home.

“Honestly, it makes you think about Hurricane Katrina and other natural disasters,” she said. “It really brings home the drama. And we’re lucky to still have a roof over our heads.”

Novak said city crews responded almost immediately and were “sincere and wanting to help.”

John Allis, in town visiting his daughter, was left to deal with a 15-foot tree limb that crashed down into her yard, nearly obliterating a bird bath that lay in its path.

“Stupid me; I came in town just in time,” he said.

The city diverted its entire street-maintenance department to clear roadways, said Peter Rosato, transportation maintenance supervisor for the city of Boulder. He was unable to estimate the cost of the damage.

“Not only does it cost us the work that we did today, but a day’s work we weren’t able to perform on street maintenance,” he said.

Rosato said he hadn’t heard reports of any serious home damage. But Tom Steinbaugh, an employee of Boulder’s McGuckin Hardware, said the store was busier than usual, selling chain saws and other tools to homeowners cleaning up after the winds.

Winds are expected to be much calmer this weekend, and highs in the mid-80s are expected to arrive Saturday and last into next week.

That should come as good news to Erik Thomas, of Boulder, who on Thursday went to use his new TV satellite dish and got a nasty surprise instead.

“Our DirectTV satellite dish just blew up in smithereens on the deck below,” he said.

Camera Staff Writer Vanessa Miller contributed to this report.

WIND BY THE NUMBERS

92: mph gust recorded Thursday in Boulder County by the National Weather Service

101: mph gust recorded Thursday in Larimer County by the National Weather Service

137: mph gust recorded in 1982 in Boulder

45,000: estimated total number of customers statewide with wind-related power outages

30,000: estimated number of Boulder customers with wind-related power outages

3,500: estimated number of customers with outages that could last until this morning

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