Colorado on alert for more tornadoes, storms and floods
BERTHOUD, Colo. -- Violent storms across Colorado have swirled into tornadoes that destroyed homes, popped open a sinkhole that swallowed a police cruiser and dropped so much hail on a Denver neighborhood that residents had to dig out of waist-deep ice with shovels.
Forecasters warned Friday that more severe weather and flooding was on the way.
The National Weather Service placed the eastern half of the state under a tornado watch and posted flood advisories in the north.
No serious injuries have been reported from the storms that raked areas from Fort Collins in the north to Pueblo, nearly 180 miles south.
In Berthoud, about 40 miles north of Denver, Alvin Allmendinger and family scrambled to the basement of his son-in-law's home just before a tornado stripped off the roof.
They stayed an hour, hail rolling down the stairs and rain seeping through the floorboards above. Firefighters eventually evacuated his father-in-law, who needs oxygen tanks to breathe.
"We're all alive, and that's what matters," Allmendinger said, standing atop the rubble of the home under ominous skies.
Emergency officials said in addition to the three homes in Berthoud that were a total loss, 12 homes that are damaged.
"All the residents of those homes has been accounted for," Berthoud Fire Chief Steve Charles said. "It's absolutely incredible that (everyone) survived. It's a miracle."
Don Grabosky told CBS Denver he saw the tornado coming directly at his neighborhood.
"I watched it coming toward me. I was standing right there on the front porch. My wife came out, she told me get the hell in the house because it was going to tear everything to pieces," he said. "But I just kept staring at it. And as it moved it devoured my neighbor's house. Just ate it."
The tornado turned north after that and Grabosky's home wasn't damaged.
The twister flipped over cars, took out bridges, knocked down trees, damaged boats and agricultural equipment, shattered windows and caused widespread power outages. Some roads were also closed Friday morning due to flooding in the area.
"The residents I've talked to say it was very frightening for them -- the high winds, a lot of hail and a lot of debris flying through the air," Chief Charles told CBS Denver Friday morning in an interview by phone. "At the house I'm at right now we have vehicles that are overturned, the roof is gone, and I'd say a third of the house is totally collapsed."
"People who have lived here 50 years had never seen weather like that before," said Luke Koldewyn of Johnstown, whose parents' modular home was destroyed. He found a family dog, Luna, trapped, but fine, in the rubble. The black Lab "didn't want to be free," he said. "She was scared to move."
Tornadoes damaged at least six homes near Simla, on Colorado's eastern plains, Elbert County officials said.
As lightning flickered from horizon to horizon and heavy rain pelted Denver overnight, Sgt. Greg Miller of the Sheridan police department drove his SUV into a 15-foot-deep, 20-foot-wide sinkhole that he couldn't see on a suburban street.
"It's something I've never experienced in my career in law enforcement. I've never even seen it, to where a full car went into a sinkhole. It was a crazy experience," Miller told CBS Denver.
Miller crawled through a window and to the vehicle's roof, then up to the pavement. He only suffered a minor injury to his leg. A crane pulled the cruiser out Friday afternoon.
In one Denver neighborhood, residents came outside to find three-foot-deep piles of hail. The marbles of ice blanketed the street like snow, and crews used bucket-loaders to clear the road.
More than seven inches of rain hit parts of the Rocky Mountain foothills, which experienced devastating flooding in 2013.
Rivers in northern Colorado, meanwhile, are running high from melting snow and an unusually rainy spring, increasing the flood risk there.
The storms that began overnight were the result of the El Nino phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean, an upper-level jet stream and a low-pressure system parked over southern California. The factors have combined to deliver moisture this week from the Gulf of Mexico into Colorado and southern Wyoming.
The system should push into Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma early next week, National Weather Service meteorologist Kari Bowen said.