‘Never seen anything like it:’ Vail rain, lightning storm a rare event
Ben Roof/Special to the Daily
An intense storm that brought strong winds, a downpour of rain and constant bursts of lightning to Eagle County on Thursday morning was indeed a rare weather event, according to the National Weather Service.
Meteorologist Chris Sanders said in looking at the rain reports from volunteer observers in Vail, it looks like the storm brought a half-inch of rain to a gauge located just east of Vail, which would tie the July 20 record set in 1985.
Diane Johnson with the Eagle River Water and Sanitation District said flow spikes in Gore Creek and the Eagle River started at 3 a.m. and kept up through approximately 7 a.m.
“And flows have stayed elevated through this afternoon,” Johnson said Thursday.
But it was the lightning that seemed to be the most unusual, according to longtime locals.
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Bob Nock with Eagle River Anglers has lived in Eagle since 1993 and says he can’t remember ever seeing a constant barrage of lightning like Eagle County saw during the 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. hour.
“There was nobody who got any sleep in Eagle last night when that rumbled through,” Nock said. “It was popping lightning every second; I’ve never seen anything like it.”
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Vail Mountain’s Alpine coaster, located atop the Eagle Bahn Gondola, saw electrical damage as a result of the storm.
“The electrical components were repaired and the coaster was open by 10:30 a.m. today,” John Plack with Vail Mountain reported on Thursday.
Sanders said it’s difficult to understand — even for a meteorologist — why some storms see more lightning than others, but the freezing level can make a difference.
“The freezing levels were a little lower, say like 12,000 feet versus like 14,000 feet, so that 2,000 feet difference could have made the storms a little more lightning active last night,” Sanders said. “To get lightning you need a static charge in the cloud, so usually when you get a mixture of rain and, high enough in the atmosphere, you get ice introduced, some of those together collide and bump into each other and create this charge, and then that usually releases and finds another charge on the ground, or cloud-to-cloud. So it could have been that.”
Another, more simplified explanation for why there seemed to be so much lightning, Sanders said, was the fact that the storm came through the area at night.
“In the day, if there’s a lot of lightning, you can’t always see it because it’s bright out,” he said.
Sanders said the system that moved through the area happened as a result of a high-pressure system hovering over the Southwest.
“Currently we have high pressure centered over New Mexico, and what can happen sometimes is you get daily thunderstorms happening around the periphery of the high pressure, and those can induce these atmospheric waves, sort of miniature low-pressure systems, that rotate around the high pressure,” Sanders said. “That helps fuel thunderstorms and showers.”
Nock’s shop, Eagle River Anglers, is located at the bridge that crosses the Eagle River in Eagle, giving him a good vantage point from which he can observe the river. He said just as he expected, the river began to turn muddy during the late morning hours following the barrage of rain.
“It was clear at first, and started getting muddy around noon,” Nock said.
On Interstate 70, a small mudslide touched down between Avon and Edwards at about 2:40 a.m.
Avon Police Chief Greg Daly said there was mud and gravel in the right lane of the westbound roadway, which the Colorado Department of Transportation cleared out using a plow truck.
Nock said in addition to the mud, he was watching the river temperature closely, as well.
“It got to 60 degrees, down from 68 degrees yesterday,” Nock said. “And that was a blessing; at about the 68 degree-threshold we usually cut off fishing because the fish are in trouble.”
All in all, “it was a godsend,” Nock said. “We needed it.”
