Mother Nature brought severe weather to northeastern Colorado again yesterday but for the second day in a row Thornton missed out on the action. Since the storms wouldn’t come to us, ThorntonWeather.com went to the storms.
Thornton seems to be in a bit of a ‘storm drought’ of late with most thunderstorms passing us by and yielding little more than a few rain drops. Elsewhere along the Colorado Front Range the story has been much different over the last two days.
The setup was near perfect thanks to the formation of a Denver cyclone with moist air pulling in from the south meeting dry air from the north.
ThorntonWeather.com took off in mid-afternoon and headed east to Bennett, then on to Byers and east on Highway 36. The initial storm cell that was beginning to take shape broke in to three and decisions had to be made on which one to follow.
The southernmost cell seemed to hold the most promise so we headed south, through Limon and tracked the storm near Simla.
The storm would drop tennis ball size hail and push out wind gusts measured at 80mph. As many as four tornadoes were reported to have been caused by the storm, a number which will be confirmed and finalized later today.
In Elbert County, emergency agencies are conducting damage assessments from at least one of the twisters that tore through the central part of the county. Extensive damage to as many as seven homes west of Simla was seen. One person received minor injuries.
Thursday’s storms were the second day in a row for severe weather in the area. On Wednesday thunderstorms brought massive amounts of hail to the southern Denver metro area and Colorado Springs. Tornadoes were also spawned although there was no damage from the twisters.