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3 Tornadoes Touch Down South Of Denver

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Aug 24, 2008 7:13 pm US/Mountain

3 Tornadoes Touch Down South Of Denver

By Kristen Wyatt, AP Writer

Reporting
Dave Aguilera
CASTLE ROCK, Colo. (CBS4/AP) ― Three tornadoes officially touched down southeast of Denver on Sunday, the eve of the Democratic National Convention. The twisters caused no substantial damage but brought out amateur storm-chasers and cast a spooky pall over the city.

Authorities said one twister touched down about 20 miles southeast of downtown Denver, between the towns of Castle Rock and Parker. Copter4 footage showed a dusty twister spinning through relatively open country, with scattered houses nearby.

The National Weather Service said later that twister had dissipated.

"It was a good one," said Steve Graves of Parker, who watched the tornado from his 1991 Jeep Cherokee. "On a scale of one to 10, it was an eight. It touched down and went back up and then touched down again, tearing everything up and kicking up dust."

Graves said the tornado was over a reservoir and didn't threaten any buildings.

Two more twisters touched down in the area, but the exact location of those weren't immediately known.

The Weather Service said at least one funnel cloud was spotted that had not reached the ground. Douglas County sheriff's spokeswoman Cocha Heyden, who was in Parker, said she could see funnel clouds in the distance.

Heyden said the county's emergency management center was already open because of the Democratic convention, which starts Monday, and workers there were monitoring the tornado on television and radio.

The NWS issued a flash flood warning for Jefferson County after the twisters. There was no immediate word of flooding damage.

The weather made for a strange start to activities around the convention. Just south of Denver, Interstate 25 was lined with motorists who stopped to film lead-gray clouds, shivering as the temperature dropped more than 20 degrees in less than an hour, from the mid-80s to about 60.

"We came to see what it was all about," said Robert Dunn, who stood on a hill of I-25 in Castle Rock and hoped to record a twister with his cell phone's video function. "Those are some pretty ugly clouds."

The storm also left a surreal scene in one neighborhood -- more than an inch of pea-sized hail on the ground, making rooftops and roads appear to have been dusted by a light snowstorm in August.

Additional Resources

• See more images of the tornado on YouReport

(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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