A possible tornado is spotted in
Centennial in Highlands Ranch.
This was a shot of what it looked like.
A viewer Abby took this picture for us.
And this is over a golf course in Centennial.
Yes, some pretty ominous
views around the metro area.
Meteorologist Corey Reppenhagen
has been driving in the worst
parts of this storm all afternoon.
This is the live view from his car right now,
although he's seen much worse.
There's some damage reports kind of all
over the place, specifically to the South,
that we're working to get to.
But we did want to show you pictures of
trees that came down in Highlands Ranch,
one of them covering a car.
The hail covering the ground
in some areas looks like snow.
Again, this is in Lone Tree.
You can see how slowly that
traffic is moving.
There's a lot of rain, a lot of hail.
And folks showing us what size
it is in that spot.
As we move to Castle Rock,
the rain and hail turned
a street into a river.
There's so much saturation on the ground,
it's like where does the water go?
And it's all come too fast
for drains to keep up with.
People in the Morrison area once
again had to take cover after
hail rain down this afternoon.
The hailstones were huge.
We're talking golf ball sized,
even baseball sized tail we've seen.
And one of our crews back out
at Red Rocks following up on
the event of last night,
and that storm got caught in
the hail again this afternoon.
They had to rush to take cover in the hail,
smash their windshield,
at least in a couple of spots.
So they're not driving home or
getting them a new vehicle.
You can see the size of that hail
to cause that kind of damage.
We're not done. We can go to Kim Carroll.
They really got hit as well,
the hail coming down hard and
they saw a lot of wind picking
up trees in that area too.
Kathy, where are we going now?
Where's the worst of it at this point?
I know you know it started earlier today,
you guys in the Front Range,
Foothill areas around 1:00,
o'clock, two o'clock.
So the worst of it is crossed the I-25
corridor and is now a concern east of us.
But now we have a concern for
some of the outflow boundaries to
set off another line yet tonight.
So National Weather Service has Denver under
a severe thunderstorm watch for 9:00 o'clock,
just because of that possibility outside.
We go in the evening drive now,
people are starting to move
a little bit on I-25,
little bit of sunshine outside.
We're seeing a little bit of a
break in the cloud cover out there.
And just kind of looking at some
of the cameras around Boulder,
we're starting to see a little
bit of that cloud cover.
Looks like maybe a few showers possibly
coming into that area after a severe
storm brought rain and hail to that.
Part of our state and now in downtown Denver,
we've gone from partly sunny to
mostly cloudy again and the storms
that are coming off the foothills
have been slowly moving and dropping
anywhere from one to two inch
diameter hail as they've been tracking
toward the east and southeast.
This large blue box that you see is
a severe thunderstorm watch which
in covers and just in Cupville,
I don't know it's sort of covers
Colorado Springs now all the way
up into southeastern Wyoming.
They've added portions of Nebraska to
this as well severe thunderstorm watch.
Out through 9:00 O'clock and this will
cover areas from Fort Collins to Denver
down to Colorado Springs up to Castle Rock.
The yellow polygons that you're
seeing on the screen there are
severe thunderstorm warnings.
Storms are tracking toward
the east and southeast.
This new thunderstorm warning is
for a cell just outside of the
Larkspur area and that cell is moving
toward the east but is capable of
producing golf ball sized hail.
Northwestern Elbert County extending
north of Kiowa just to the South of
the Byers area is kind of our focus.
These storms developed in the
Evergreen area around 1:30 today,
dropping one to two inch diameter hail,
a similar path to what we saw last
night crossing Douglas County and
then also bringing that torrential
rain onto saturated soils.
As Alex mentioned,
there has been at least one tornado
reported this in Northwestern
Highlands Ranch.
And that's line of storms now
has tracked to the east,
where hail and heavy rain have
created some flooding concerns.
And we're getting the storm reports
in from Highlands Ranch back up into
the Lakewood, out toward Aurora,
Centennial and Parker.
Many hailstones have been golf ball sized,
tennis ball sized.
With that tornado touching down in the
Highlands Ranch area this afternoon,
we've had a lot of tree damage.
Trees down on roadways,
roads have been flooded,
rivers of water and hail.
Coming down I-25,
we started with Broadway and C470,
Wildcat Parkway and then it
Ridgegate and I25 Southbound traffic
was just at a standstill.
The biggest hail now north of Black
Forest into Kiowa and Elizabeth
reports from our Corey Reppenhagen
on the ground in Elizabeth is
the hail is 3 to 4 inches deep
in and around the Elizabeth area.
So Kim and Alex,
the severe threat over for Denver for now,
but possibly not for the entire evening.
So I'll have more for you in just
a few minutes.
Okay, we'll talk to you soon Kathy.
We've
been talking about the fact Douglas
County Highlands Ranch specifically,
really hit hard by this storm probably a
couple hours ago was maybe the worst of it,
maybe an hour and a half ago when people
really felt the weight of it and the
winds and everything else connected to it.
And we've been getting a lot
of pictures of that damage.
And finally our Kelly Rinky has been there.
We want to catch up with her.
What have you been seeing in that area?
We know S Fire Rescue is just
inundated with calls right now.
Yeah, and we've been seeing a
lot of their fire trucks that
are passing through this area.
We just got into Highlands Ranch about
20 minutes ago and this is what a
lot of the streets are looking like.
This is on Highlands Park Highway
and this is a gentleman who is
picking up some of the debris.
He almost looks like he owns a property
that is just on the other side of
this fence line they just wrapped up
cleaning up this massive tree that fell
onto the street is a three lane Rd.
on this side and it's only been one
lane since we have been here guys,
just to give you an idea of.
How strong and powerful these winds are.
What is in this road right now
is actually one of those St.
lights, those overhang lights and that
fell on on the road along with the tree.
And it looks like this tree
actually came from a backyard,
from a house that is on the
other side of this fence.
Highlands Ranch Metro District crews
were out here with this gentleman with
their chainsaws took at least when we
were here for 10 minutes took them that
amount of time to clear out this road.
But it looks like they are kind
of wrapping up that process.
But since we have been here,
this is really most of the
scene that we have been seeing,
most of the types of damage that
we've been seeing, a lot of these.
Huge,
huge trees that have fallen over
and we've been hearing reports
from neighbors in Highlands Ranch.
That is most of the damage that
they've been seeing in their
neighborhoods of the some of the
addresses of the damage that we've
been hearing about is just east of us.
So in a couple minutes we're planning
on going over there to see how some
of the homeowners are hanging in
there after this really scary storm,
guys.
Look at that and they're down to
one lane there and you know that's
been going on for a while. Yep.
And I'm sure there's so much more to see.
In fact, we want to give you
another look at Highlands Ranch.
That's where our Chris Bianchi is
also some well, we can see some
huge trees behind you down there.
That's right, Kim. Yeah, I'm here in
Cougar Run Park in Highlands Ranch.
This would be right near University
as well as a C470 and we've got some
pretty big trees that are down here
and got a whole string of them this.
Tree to me looks like it's
about 2025 feet tall,
but it's of course not the only tree
that's down in this whole area.
I got some bystanders here,
but also some of these trees,
again 2025 feet tall.
And maybe an interesting component of
this is you might notice how these trees
are all down in the same direction.
That is something that we typically
see with straight line wind damage.
But when the when the weather
National Weather Service comes
out to assess some of this damage,
they're going to assess.
Whether there was a twisting motion
with some of this damage to assess
whether or not a tornado took place,
but these trees all basically
down in the same direction.
Now in terms of some of the damage,
again you can see here at Cougar Run Park,
lots and lots of trees down.
On our walk over here we saw
several of these trees down as well.
But what we're hearing from some
of the bystanders and some of the
area people here in the area is
that there's been quite a bit in
the way of some home damage.
As well,
a little bit behind me and behind
kind of this little hill that
you're seeing here behind me.
So again,
a fair bit of the way of damage
so far at this point looks like
some of these kind of small to
medium sized trees down,
but it looks like some maybe larger
trees down off in that direction
and that we're going to go see
maybe some of the homes and some of
the larger trees that came down.
But at this point looks like some
pretty substantial damage down here
in Cougar Run Park in Highlands Ranch.
Is jaw-dropping.
I don't know if I've ever seen anything
To see every single tree like that,
Chris, that really illustrates,
as he said it there,
it's going to be something they'll study
in time about maybe some swirling motion.
With the wind and and how this tornadic
activity took down all those trees,
just incredible to see.
And our crews and Highlands reenter
just now really getting on the
ground and getting out neighborhoods.
So they'll be bringing us much
more as we continue our coverage.
How we're only hours from our last storm.
There was a lot of flooding and sadly a
woman could not be saved from floodwaters.
Last night.
Her car got swept off the road
about 20 miles east of Denver.
Rescue crews discovered it far off
the road just South of Watkins.
A few hours after sunrise this morning,
Jeremy Hohola joins us live with
more on this terrible death.
Jeremy.
Yeah, we'll talk about that terrible,
sad story here in just a minute,
but we want to give you an
idea of what we're seeing now.
You've heard about the calm before the storm.
Now we're in the middle of
the calm after the storm.
We're standing right in the middle
of the Cherry Creek State Park here,
and we have a nice 180 degree view of
this corner of the Front Range from the
DTC to parts of our to parts of Denver.
And we can see.
The storms are really certain
to break up here where we are,
but as we start to pan towards the east,
here we see the edge of that big
Gray monster that caused all sorts
of wet weather here in this area,
in this corner of the metro area.
This is part of that storm that we
see is a big red BLOB on our radar.
This is reminiscent of the rains that
happened about 20 miles east of Denver
last night in the town of Watkins.
And then this morning,
as you were talking about that,
a family did receive some devastating news.
Torrential rains turning roads into
rivers South of Watkins Wednesday night,
the roads were just flooded
and washed out. Look over,
there's a tire floating down the road.
I ended up seeing bales of hay. Eric
Lap captured this cell phone footage as
he went to check on animals at his ranch.
And I've been out here 6-7 years and
I've never ever seen weather like this.
The water was so intense it pushed
cars off the road in this region,
prompting Fire Rescue.
The fire department said it saved two
people who got trapped by the flooding.
But come morning,
with assistance of South Metro,
their dive team and the use of their drone,
we were able to locate just the top of that
vehicle 400 yards or so down the roadway.
They learned water pushed a third
car hundreds of yards off The road.
Driver did not survive a
South Metro dive team.
With our assistance,
I was able to unfortunately
recover a adult female victim.
And then that was.
Pretty much it where we're at,
yeah. Very devastating news for that family.
Let's hope they're doing OK and they
can find strength in her memory.
In the meantime,
officials have yet to identify her,
but we'll see if we can get more
information about that in the days ahead.
In the meantime,
here in the Cherry Creek State Park,
we can start to see a rainbow.
In this area, I'm not sure if
you can see it on your screen,
but you can see the slight
image of a rainbow behind us.
So as this big cell moves
out of the metro area,
we see what it leaves behind.
Back to this, we
can see that rainbow. Thank you.
Jeremy really did give us a great
360 degree view of what's happening,
what people have seen all around
the metro area and around
the state today. Thank you.