After a night of brutal winds, many Boulder-area residents are picking up the pieces — and, in some cases, whole trees.
When Boulder resident Joan Rocho opened her front door Thursday morning, she was greeted with the sight of her 50-foot blue spruce — a Mother’s Day gift she received in the early 1970s — lying across her driveway.
“The Lord just made it fall perfect,” Rocho said. “It did not hit my house, and it did not fall on my neighbor’s house. It just missed the mailbox. It couldn’t have fallen in a better place.”
The tree, which wound up between Rocho’s car and the street, stranded her at home Thursday morning.
Winds pummeled the metro area late Wednesday and early Thursday. One weather station in south Boulder reported a gust of 104 mph, said meteorologist Matt Kelsch. He said the reading was probably from a backyard station, though, so he couldn’t guarantee its accuracy.
The National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Mesa Lab recorded a gust of 84 mph early Thursday, and NCAR’s Foothills Lab, near the intersection of the Diagonal Highway and Foothills Parkway, measured a gust of 75 mph.
Rocho’s tree wasn’t the only blue spruce to come down overnight. Brandy Brown of Blue River Forestry and Tree Care said her company received calls about two downed blue spruces.
Brown said the trees’ thick foliage can act like a sail in high winds, making it easier for the wind to push the trees over.
Brown’s company also got calls Thursday about other trees that didn’t make it through the night.
“We have been very busy today from last night’s windstorm,” she said. “Everything from trees crushing a car to trees in a front porch to trees on a driveway. So we’ve actually seen it all today.”
Tree damage caused by last fall’s snowstorms tended to be limited to branches. But the recent wicked winds caused larger casualties.
“This storm, what we’re really seeing is whole trees down,” Brown said.
That was the case in some of Boulder’s parks. City spokeswoman Sarah Huntley said the parks and recreation staff had gotten reports Thursday of several small evergreens down in city parks as well as four large evergreens down at Flatirons Golf Course.
Wednesday night’s windstorm was the latest of several that have hit Boulder this winter, but meteorologist Kelsch said that doesn’t mean it’s been windier, overall, than in other years.
“We’ve had some high-impact windstorms this season so far and periods where there are several days in a row with high winds,” he said. “But we’ve had long stretches of surprisingly little wind, especially in December. We seem to have one extreme or the other.”
