About 10:00 PM or so, I noticed a few storm cells starting to move into the north Denver Metro area.  After skipping a lucrative chase day in Nebraska and Kansas earlier, I was eager to get out and shoot some lightning at the least.  Little did I know what I was in for.  I decided to go to the DU Light Rail parking garage where I could get a good view.  After about 30 minutes of failed photography attempts (like usual), the storm really started to get its act together.  The lightning illuminated very low hanging clouds with clearly visible rotation.  Dann Cianca sent me a text saying he was down near Castle Rock where the storm had gone tornado warned.  We both had thought we had seen a wall cloud looming very low.

You can see a low cloud base in the background that was definitely rotating...

My night time photography skills are utter shit, but in a few of my shots you can really see the lowering on the storm that probably spawned 2 small tornadoes in Englewood and Castle Rock.

Looking south east from DU...again, very low cloud base with rotation...

After a few ‘bro’s’ from DU who told me they “totally bailed on their hookah party to see a tornado” crashed my photog session on the roof of the Light Rail station, I decided to relocate before I killed myself.  That’s when I received a phone call from Dann saying Tony Laubach was up in Wheat Ridge where there was significant damage, probably from a tornado.  So the both of us decided to head up there to have a look.  I took 6th avenue to Kipling and then went north.  I got only 7 blocks before the road was completely cut off.  I was able to cut through a neighborhood and got back further north to Colfax and the evidence of damage was almost immediate.  I pulled into the First Bank parking lot and the first thing I saw was this:

This tree wasn't snapped, it was completely pulled out of the ground!

It was a very weird and bizarre situation.  All of the roads were low visibility because of all the hail fog.  Hail fog will form when there is a significant accumulation of hail and a decrease in temperature mixes with all the moisture of the hail starting to melt.  It was really cool to see but made driving in some areas extremely dangerous.  The accumulation of hail was insane.  And as you can see from the picture below, it wasn’t really that the hail was large in size, it’s that there was so much of it.

Lots of hail on the ground. They even brought out the snow plows to clear some of Kipling!

Right near the intersection of Colfax and Kipling, the fire department had the road blocked off due to a gas leak.  Dann shot some more video and I took a few shots of a tree that had been snapped in half.

Snapped trees like this were a common sight all along Kipling...

Later, I ventured off a bit further north to see if the damage was heavier and it seemed pretty consistent with the damage we saw near Colfax and Kipling.  I pulled into a neighborhood that was obviously without power and took one last shot of a mailbox that had been hit with wind.  It made it very apparent which way this storm had gone through.

Strong winds stuck leaves and branches to this mailbox...

Finally around 1 AM I decided to head back home.  What started out as a quick lightning shoot, turned into a 3+ hour trip to Wheat Ridge to do a damage survey.  I’ll have to leave it up to the NWS to determine if the damage we saw was from an actual tornado.  It wouldn’t surprise me if it was, but it also wouldn’t surprise me if this was all caused from straight line winds instead.  Either way, I was shocked at the damage that was there.  Definitely didn’t foresee all of this madness when I left my house earlier tonight!  Great stuff and I hope everyone in Wheat Ridge gets their power back soon.

Scott

***7/22 Update*** “The National Weather Service said the damage was caused by straight-line winds from a microburst.”  So there you go, probably not a tornado, however due to the darkness we’ll probably never know for sure…

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