DENVER-
A spring storm brought a strange brew of tornadoes, heavy snow, rain and hail to Colorado on Tuesday, damaging buildings and forcing schools and highways to close and stranding buses with dozens of school children onboard.
Six buses carrying at least 60 children were stranded on El Paso County plains after being unable to travel in the storm that dropped more than a foot of snow in about two hours, said Rob Finley, the county’s assistant fire marshall. Children in those buses were all accounted for late Tuesday and had been rescued and taken to shelters opened in the county about 80 miles south of Denver.
“It was zero visibility… One bus was stranded between two power lines,” Finley said.
The sun was shining in downtown Colorado Springs Tuesday afternoon, which masked the whiteout conditions on the plains east of town where crews on Sno-Cats also rescued some 50 motorists, said Lt. Clif Northam of the El Paso County sheriff’s office.
Gov. Bill Ritter activated the Colorado National Guard to help rescue the buses Tuesday evening amid snow and 60 mph winds about 30 miles east of Colorado Springs, Ritter’s spokesman Evan Dreyer said.
Up to 70 passenger vehicles also were caught in the storm, Dreyer said.
Earlier, a tornado touched down near the small town of Wild Horse about 110 miles southeast of Denver. No injuries were reported, but several buildings were damaged, the Cheyenne County Sheriff’s Department said.
A second twister was reported near the Colorado-Kansas border, about 35 miles east of Wild Horse, but no details were immediately known.
William Skinner, 47, of Wild Horse said the tornado first looked like a rope dangling from the clouds but then widened at the top and bottom.
“I was terrified,” he said. “It was right there, by my neighbor’s, just about 200 feet away.”
He said he started building a tornado shelter in January and now “I’m going to be working like Noah’s Ark to finish it.”
Evergreen, in the foothills west of Denver, reported 16 inches of snow. Other foothills towns reported 6 to 14 inches.
“There’s cars sliding off the roads everywhere,” said Rick Olde, owner of Olde’s Convenience Store in Evergreen. “A lot of people took their snow tires off a little early this year.”
Olde, a lifelong Evergreen resident, said spring snow is not unusual. “But people get a little complacent when you get 70- to 75-degree days in April,” he said.
Truckers were ordered to chain up because of snow and ice on some mountain roads, and schools from the mountains and foothills canceled classes.
Tumbling boulders, a fallen power line, accidents, slick pavement and poor visibility forced nearly a dozen road closures, including on two of the state’s busiest highways, Interstates 25 and 70.
A jackknifed semi backed up traffic for nearly 20 miles on southbound I-25 between Denver and Colorado Springs.
About half the closed routes had reopened after cleanups, but crews were still struggling to clear others.
The courthouse in Walsenburg, 163 miles south of Denver, had to be closed because of weather damage. Chief Judge Claude W. Appel of the 3rd Judicial District said court would reopen Monday.
Hail the size of quarters or smaller fell in southeastern Colorado, the National Weather Service said.
“It sounded like it was big, but it wasn’t,” said Bill Patton, an 80-year-old rancher who lives near Punkin Center. He drove through a hail storm on his way to La Junta.
The hail lasted about 10 minutes but the rain fell through the early afternoon.
“It’s good for us. We’re ranchers,” Patton said. “It’s ideal.”
Flooding was reported in northeast Colorado, northwest Kansas and southwest Nebraska, leaving some rural roads impassable. Heavy rain also swamped intersections in Denver.
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Associated Press Writers Eric Daigh and Dan Elliott and Photographer David Zalubowski contributed to this report.
