And the region, particularly Boulder and Jefferson counties, should brace for another round on Saturday with Xcel Energy preparing to enact its emergency power shut-offs beginning midday.
Colorado State University closed its campus on Thursday afternoon, and the Poudre School District closed its mountain schools because of the wind damage. The CSU campus closure forced CHSAA to relocate its state 2A boys and girls basketball tournament Great 8 games to local high schools.
The Larimer County Office of Emergency Management sent evacuation notifications to 2,401 contacts after a wildfire erupted near the intersection of U.S. 287 and Sterry Lane, north of Fort Collins near Laporte. The evacuation order was brief as fire crews gained control after a few hours. No injuries were reported and no buildings were destroyed, said Kate Kimble, a Larimer County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman.
The cause remains under investigation.
The reported multiple semitrailer rollovers in the Jefferson County foothills and along Interstate 25 between Fort Collins and the Wyoming border.
One 38-year-old driver was taken to a hospital after his semitrailer crashed at 8:44 a.m. on Colorado 93 in Jefferson County. The semitrailer struck a power line.
A second semitrailer crash at 9:22 a.m. in Jefferson County caused the closure of eastbound I-70 on Lookout Mountain for several hours. No injuries were reported, but the truck leaked 30 gallons of fuel onto the road.
The state patrol also reported four semitrailer rollover crashes on Interstate 25 within three hours on a stretch between Fort Collins and the Wyoming border. One driver was taken to a hospital.
The Colorado Department of Transportation closed the interstate for several hours because of the wind.
While no utility companies chose to preemptively shut off power to their customers, thousands of homes and businesses in the Front Range lost electricity after the wind blew down power lines. The entire town of Wellington in Larimer County lost power on Thursday morning, and as of 5 p.m. Thursday, reported that more than 17,000 of its customers were without electricity. As many as 32,000 customers were without power earlier Thursday.
Xcel Energy warned customers that dangerously high winds in Saturday’s forecast were leading the utility to make emergency power shutoffs starting around 2 p.m. The winds were expected to last until around 5 p.m., the company
Residents in Boulder and Jefferson counties are at risk of losing electricity during those hours and should prepare for the outages, Xcel said.
Multiple agencies put fire restrictions in place, including Rocky Mountain National Park, which banned fires inside the park’s boundaries. Campers in Moraine Park were allowed to use petroleum-fueled stoves and grills that can be turned on and off. Smoking is also not allowed.
Peak wind gusts recorded on Thursday include:
• Denver International Airport: 48 mph
• Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport: 56 mph
• Buckeye station in Larimer County: 94 mph
• Xcel’s Gold Hill station near Four Mile Canyon: 92 mph
• National Lab of the Rockies in Boulder: 94 mph
The high winds were caused by a Chinook weather pattern in which downslope winds reach the crest of the Rocky Mountains and then pick up speed as they traverse the foothills, said Zach Hiris, a meteorologist with the .
The winds had slowed in the Denver metro by late afternoon but were expected to continue at higher elevations into Friday morning, Hiris said. And another band of strong winds was forecast for Friday.
“For the Front Range communities further up into the hills, we’ve got at least another 12 to 18 hours to go,” Hiris said on Thursday evening.
