A microburst windstorm blasted through the Cortez area Wednesday afternoon, tearing roofs from buildings, snapping tree limbs and mangling power lines.
Local weather monitor Jim Andrus estimated gusts of 60 to 65 mph. He said he timed a cloud of dust traveling across a parking lot and calculated it to be traveling at 68 mph.
Gusts of 54 mph were recorded at the Cortez Municipal Airport.
County Road M resident Donna Bowling returned from a trip to find her barn was destroyed when the wind ripped the roof from the structure, dropping it in large metal chunks as far as 50 yards away.
The barn was anchored to the ground by 6-inch wooden poles.
It just yanked them up out of the ground like nothing, Bowling said. It tore the 2 by 6s and scattered them like toothpicks.
Bowling said family members were going to feed cats at the barn when they witnessed a trampoline flying past and a large object they later determined to be the barns roof.
You never think its going to happen here, Bowling said. Its something you read about in the newspaper thats far away.
No people or animals were injured in the incident, Bowling said.
Cortez Fire Protection District Chief Jeff Vandevoorde said the district was dispatched to four calls within 10 minutes during the event for downed power lines and what was later determined to be an unfounded report of a lightning fire.
The wind also tore the roof from a vacant laundromat on Arbecam Street and splintered a tree that blocked Montezuma Avenue.
Empire Electric Association workers were busy repairing power lines.
Several locations in Empire Electric service territory experienced storm-related outages Wednesday between 2:45 p.m. and 7:59 p.m., according to information from the co-op.
The largest outage was on the east Cortez circuit and affected 775 consumers, involving several different problems in several areas. Primary lines were on the ground on County Road M as a result of wind and trees. The power on this circuit was restored to all but 50 consumers, and then 30 to 40 minutes later another outage occurred.
Other outages from the Cortez area to Monticello, Utah, were attributed to the wind blowing tree limbs and roof tiles into power lines.
Andrus said microbursts are caused when a storm grows to towering heights, then collapses under its own weight, causing a downward burst of wind.
Reach Reid Wright at [email protected].
