As sheets of rain turned the streets of Laramie into muddied rivers and the wind whipped the trees into a frenzy I jokingly remarked to my roommate that the apocalypse was finally upon us. Half expecting the four horsemen to come thundering out of the clouds, I didn’t know what to think when I heard that a tornado had officially touched down in our relatively small college town.
According to John Griffith of the National Weather Service in Cheyenne the storm that swept across Laramie last Thursday was in fact a weak tornado. Griffith examined the damage the following day and assessed that winds were probably between 95 and 105 miles an hour. Damages included trees being blown over as well as some roofs of buildings being ripped off. Also due to the storm, power was off and on during most of Thursday and was even cause for class cancellations the following Friday at two different schools.
James Stauffer, an undeclared sophomore, happened to be on the hills east of town when the storm first started and remembers getting a call. “My brother called me and told me that there was going to be a tornado so I got out of there pretty quickly. Right when I left it started dropping golf-ball sized hail and that’s about the time they started blaring the tornado sirens around town.” Stauffer goes on the recall how once the sirens sounded people’s fear started to become apparent. “People started swerving and I could tell they were panicked.
As soon as I made it to my brother’s house his wife came rushing out and we went to the elementary nearby which seemed like a safe place to be.” During the storm parents who’d been concerned for their children huddled alongside teachers and others from the community, all seeking shelter from the outside elements.
After the storm had passed and it was safe to venture into the more damaged areas it was easy to see what the storm had done. Windows from houses and cars had been blown out and in some places garage doors had been pressed in and bent. “Probably the worst thing I remember seeing was a shed that was out in a field near the middle school,” Stauffer remarks, “it looked like a bomb went off, metal from the shed was all over the place and wrapped around fence posts a ways away.”
According to the Colorado Springs Gazette Gov. Dave Freudenthal authorized the National Guard’s participation in the clean up effort around town.
Although most of the damage caused by the storm took place Thursday afternoon, weather conditions weren’t much better Friday and a tornado warning was issued for most of the afternoon and late into the evening, luckily no tornado ensued.
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