June storm spawned 36 tornados in 3 hours on the Eastern Plains
After an investigation, the National Weather Service in Boulder says June 21 storm in Logan And Washington counties was a unique one.
"There was a lot of activity that day," said Greg Heavener the warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Boulder.
"We had a total of 36 distinct tornadoes that occurred in both Logan and Washington County."
If you are thinking that's unusual, you are right.
"That's a lot. We typically average 30 to 50 tornadoes in Colorado any given year. We basically have exceeded some of those averages within a three-hour time period in one day," said Heavener.
All the tornados were rated EF1 or EF2. There was damage to structures including one home that was made uninhabitable and powerlines were snapped in half. The National Weather Service says you can blame our wet weather.
"We've had so much moisture just sitting across Colorado, really since you know, early to mid-May. And we haven't seen a lot of moisture really escape us too much or we keep getting more transfusions of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico that kind of stream back up in eastern Colorado. And when you add moisture and a little bit of heating the sunshine, and you add a little bit of winds above our heads, the winds begin to turn the atmosphere kind of on its side kind of roll like a log on a hill. Anytime you get a storm that develops or that area, it basically turns that horizontal roll into a vertical role and that can produce the supercells that we had on that day," said Heavener.
Seeing as how the storms haven't let up yet we can expect more of the same.
"We are still in the thick of our severe weather season. Anytime you get the turning of the winds naturally in the atmosphere anytime you have a storm develops over that natural turning of the winds you could see storms begin to also spin and rotate," said Heavener.
That evening a storm also dumped hail on Red Rocks during a concert which the National Weather Service says was "one of the worst hail storms in Colorado regarding human injuries in a long time."
To protect yourself from storms like these they recommend paying attention to severe weather alerts on your phones and in the media.
