When I got to work it was the first thing that came up in conversation. We have employees who live throughout the metropolitan area and it seems that almost everyone experienced some aspects of the storm. Some suffered fairly serious damage with screens, windows, siding, and roofs bearing the brunt of the storm's fury. Others were awakened by pounding rain and sirens going off in the middle of the night. My first interview candidate of the morning had driven up from Castle Rock and mentioned that his local King Soopers had suffered such extensive damage that they might have to close until repairs could be made.
Colorado certainly gets its share of severe weather from blizzards and frigid temperatures in Winter to droughts and extreme heat in the warmer months. Anyone who has lived along the front range is used to our summer cycle of afternoon thunderstorms and we see our share of gulley washers. Maybe its just my perception, but yesterday's storms seemed out of the ordinary.
I live on the west side of town and normally our storms come rolling in from the foothills and then march across the Denver area until eventually dying out over the far eastern plains as nightime temperatures sap the storms of their energy. Wednesday's activity didn't appear to start over the mountains, and when I drove home after work the sky above the foothills was actually clear and sunny. Looking to the south and east though, it was clear there was some nasty weather brewing. Watching the nine o'clock news it was evident that even the weather forecasters were having some difficulty getting a handle on a developing weather situation. At the start of the broadcast the weatherperson was saying what we typically hear: heavy rains starting to let up, tornado watches beginning to expire, and the storms heading out to die in the arid air of the Colorado plains. By nine thirty however they were singing a different tune - storms that generally move off to the east and weaken were now moving to the north and west and strengthening.
When I went to bed I wondered if we'd be lucky enough to get some of the moisture (Coloradans love our green lawns, but don't like to pay to water them...). Little did I know that in just a couple of hours I'd have more water falling from the sky than I could have hoped for, and then some. 12:35 a.m. is when the thunder and lightning awakened I and my wife. Actually that's not quite correct. What really woke us up was our 55 pound Siberian husky jumping into bed and trying to bury himself under the covers. Chinook is twelve years old and as alpha a male as a dog can be. Normally he can sleep through anything other than the sound of kibble being put into his food dish, but last night he was physically shaking. Hmmm, we thought, something must be up.
Then it hit. Slow, steady rain rapidly turned into a deluge of water falling out of a greenish colored sky (several of my coworkers also noticed the eerie appearance of the clouds). The buckets of rain then gave way to pounding hail. Again, anyone who has lived in Colorado has seen all this before but usually these storms are fairly short lived, wreaking their havoc and then moving on. Not last night. It seemed that wave after wave of rain followed by hail fell from the sky for more than an hour. How my skylights survived is beyond me. And the lightning was something I have never seen. It was non-stop. I commented to my wife that it looked like a strobe light it was so continuous. The thunder too was out of the ordinary - it never stopped. There were no gaps between the claps of thunder. Instead it was more of a steady roar with an occasional boom indicating a closer strike. And then the sirens went off. I'm assuming they were tornado sirens but I do know they were just barely audible over the crashing of the thunder.
Eventually, of course, the storms eventually moved on to pummel other neighborhoods and wake up other people and other pets. Forecasters warn of a repeat this afternoon. As I write this I realize how easy it is to get caught up in the moment and think that what we have experienced is completely new and truly out of the ordinary. But last night, at about 1:00 a.m. in the midst of the storm, I caught myself thinking back to a night long ago when I was much younger. July 31, 1976 is perhaps a date that has no meaning to many who read this as it is likely that many of you were not even born then. I was surprised last night how vividly I remembered that Saturday night storm from so long ago.
Now remembered as the Big Thompson Canyon Flood, like yesterday's storms, no one quite anticipated what was about to happen those 36 years past.As with last night, the rain came and would not let up (Estes Park would see more than 3 1/2 inches of rain fall in a 24 hour period; Fort Collins had 4.6 inches in just 4 hours), continuing to come down in sheets for an extended period. What most people back then didn't know is that it was doing much the same thing in the mountains to the west of Estes Park. Over the next four-and-a-half hours, very heavy rain fell over a 70-square mile area in the central portion of the more than 800-square mile Big Thompson drainage basin.
By the next day the resulting flash flood would claim 139 lives, destroy 316 homes, 45 mobile homes, 52 businesses, and 438 automobiles. Thousands of tourists were in the canyon anticipating the next day's celebration of Colorado's Centennial. People had to literally run for their lives ahead a wall of water which peaked at more than 30,000 cubic feet per second as it rushed down the normally placid canyon (by comparison, according to the U.S. Geological Service, the average discharge of the Colorado River as it flows through the Grand Canyon is just over 21,000 cfs). So as impressed as I am with last night's weather, and as tempted as I am to think it was unique, I'll never forget my young man's memory from 1976 as it started to rain: Hmmm, something must be up...
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