Elbert – Rusty Mundy watched the dark clouds dance themselves into the shape of a teacup over the rolling plains of Elbert County on Thursday afternoon.
About 1:30, a funnel cloud’s wispy tail flung down like the crack of a whip, demolishing the 1,800-square-foot ranch house his neighbor was building to sell.
“It just exploded,” Mundy said of the tornado that skipped across the landscape 4 miles southwest of the bucolic town of Elbert.
The roof was flung 40 yards away, and the home’s fresh lumber was ripped apart and scattered.
Yet the twister was so precise in its strike that it left the scraps in a nearby construction waste bin undisturbed and an open pack of asphalt shingles unshuffled on the floor of what was the garage.
The tornado sucked out the windows of another home nearby and left most of a tree on its rooftop.
No one was injured.
Just about that time, less than a mile away, Tom Gray looked out his front porch at the threatening sky that had just dumped a blizzard of hail.
A twister the size of an ocean liner went by, spitting out lumber and debris.
Uh-oh, Gray recalled thinking, someone lost a house. It was his home, his debris.
Gray was building the nearby home to put on the market in just two weeks, on the rolling plains where city folks are starting to relocate for top dollar in a community where Main Street is a dirt road.
“I’ve got insurance,” he said, a sigh noticeable. “All that’s left is the bathtub, so I’ll be starting over from scratch.”
Tiffany Garner looked over the wreckage, recalling how she and her husband, owners of Wildhorse Construction, spent nine and a half hours finishing the roof.
Gray couldn’t resist breaking the news to the roofers.
“I called them and said, ‘Hey, you know that roof you put on? It’s leaking like a sieve,”‘ he said.
The twister was the product of a thunderstorm that brewed over Elbert and Douglas counties after lunch Thursday.
Patrons of the South Forty Saloon said there were as many as five funnel clouds spotted before one touched.
“It’s common to have funnel clouds, but not tornadoes,” said longtime Elbert resident Danny Shaw.
Staff writer Joey Bunch can be reached at 303-820-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com.
