Skylar & Jamie: Tornado in Windsor

A huge tornado hit Windsor, CO yesterday around noon. My office is in Windsor, which is just about 11 miles southeast of where we live in Fort Collins. Around 11 am it started to hail so all of us in the office were just standing around looking out the window. The hail started off pretty small, but soon it was golf ball size! The damage to the cars in the parking lot was terrible. My front windshield was cracked (two perfect circles about 1-foot in diameter, kinda weird) and there are "dimples" all over the top and hood. One person's back windshield was completely shattered. Little did we know that this would be the least of the damage around the rest of the town.

Shortly after the hail storm started the power went out. I tried calling Jamie (who had the day off and was at home in Fort Collins) but the call wouldn't go through. She was able to call me a little bit later and said that a tornado had knocked over a couple of semis just south of Windsor. So of course we all go out side and look at the sky (after it stopped hailing). I didn't see any funnel clouds, but there were tons of other clouds in the sky doing crazy things. Right about that time I guess the tornado hit in East Windsor (I work on the west side of town). But at this point we still didn't know that there was a tornado warning (no power or phones, so we were kind of in the dark in more ways than one). Shortly there after we saw tons of emergency vehicles driving by toward the other part of town. One of my co-workers kids were in a day care on that end of town and she just got a strange feeling that something happened to the day care. She was freaking out because she couldn't get in touch with anybody because we couldn't make any cars out. So three of us jumped in the car and went over to the day care trying to assure her that it was just a hail storm and everything was going to be alright. As we got closer to the other side of town we started to see trees that had been snapped in half, fences were blown over, a couple of cars had been flipped on their side with all of the windows blown out... not good. We pulled up to the day care and it was like a scene straight out of a movie. The building right next-door to the day care center was just a pile of rubble, every car in the parking lot had windows blown out, the playground at the day care was destroyed, but the day care center itself was still in tact. There was lines of kids crossing the street and teachers pushing cradles full of kids. They were all headed to a nearby bank that was a little safer. Thankfully all of the kids were accounted for and okay. My co-worker found her kids and was able to take them home. I went over to another co-workers house who lives in Windsor to survey the damage. Luckily only one window was broken (probably just from the hail). I ended up going back home to Fort Collins and spent the rest of the day listening to the radio to keep up with the storm.

All in all I think seven tornadoes touched down in the area. The "path of destruction" was over 30 miles long and about 1 mile wide. The town of Windsor was hit the hardest. The most amazing thing, the biggest blessing, was that there was only one death and very few serious injuries. Quite a crazy day. I am sure this weekend there will be tons of opportunities to help in the recovery/clean-up process.

Today at work we are going to go out and just find some place to help. My co-workers know a lot of people in the neighborhoods that were hit the worst and we might go over and help them out. But most people aren't even allowed back in their homes because of gas leaks and structural damage. I can't imagine loosing my entire house, but most people who have been interviewed on the news have a positive outlook. It is just stuff.

Here are a few pictures from the internet.

A lot of the houses were completely destroyed. Almost every house in Colorado has a basement, so that saved the lives of hundreds of residents.