High winds disrupt life, prompt unusually high number of emergency calls

When Helen Premer stepped out the front door of her house Friday morning in Evans, the daily paper wasn't the only thing she found. The 50-foot long blue spruce, which she planted more than 50 years ago in her front yard, had been completely up-rooted.

Roots up to 10 feet in length pointed toward the sky as the tree lay sideways across Premer's lawn and stretched into the street.

Similar to many other Weld County residents Friday, Premer's tree was a victim to the extremely high winds that blew over northern Colorado in somewhat of a chaotic spring cleaning.

"I heard a creaking noise overnight," said Premer, 84. "I looked out here around 10 a.m. to grab my paper, and there I saw it. It was like some beached whale."Disappointed, Premer admitted that she was thankful that the unexpectedly strong winds didn't blow the tree into her house.

The unpredictable 60 mph wind gusts disrupted life by blowing down trees, tree limbs, power lines and utility poles, which caused residents to make a large number of calls to rescue authorities.

Union Colony Fire/Rescue Authority spokesman Dale Lyman said that between 10 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., firefighters responded to 35 emergency calls, a bit more than the amount typically received in 24 hours. Lyman said the high amount of calls forced the department to call all off-duty firefighters to handle the extra load.

The majority of the calls related to damaged power lines, or fallen trees that had blown over onto and into houses, but the wind blew away other light large objects not tied down.

Greeley resident Tracey Nixon said she heard a loud noise and she and her daughter looked outside to see the neighbor's trampoline fly over the fence.

"It flew up over a 6-foot fence and into our yard and then hit our metal shed and went back behind to our other neighbor's yard," Nixon said. "Right now, it is attached and chained to his tree so it won't blow into his house."

Surprised by the strength of the wind, Nixon said she was relieved that the trampoline caused no damages to her house, and glad that her family had recently taken down their own trampoline.

Other Weld residents weren't so fortunate.

David Bashor, a rancher in Grover, said the damage in that area of the county was the worst he's ever seen. High winds peeled the roof form a modular home in the town and blew over a big tree and other big cottonwood trees in the area.

During mid-day, the scene on 30th Avenue and 13th Street in Greeley looked like a deforestation zone of fallen trees and branch debris. Most of the debris landed in the streets, but one tree collapsed on the roof of a car.

Tree branch debris could be seen all over town, but the high wind gusts also displaced numerous power lines, contributing to power loss all around the city. Eight intersections in Greeley were affected by the wind, and according to Xcel Energy spokesman Mark Stutz, there were an estimated 2,000 small localized outages in Weld; an outage of 975 customers occurred in the southern edge of Greeley.

While Friday's forceful wind display wreaked havoc, resident Barbara Yacovetta said the wind provided some phenomenal natural entertainment.

Staying inside her daughter's house on 60th Avenue and 59th Street, she watched for hours as an abundance of tumbleweeds stacked up on the front porch of the neighbor's house. She said the tumbleweeds accumulated one by one, and would stack up as if caught in the same wind pattern against the porch eventually consuming the entire front entry up to the roof. Yacovetta said she had to take some pictures.

"To watch it all, it was really incredible," she said.