An interesting weather setup today as four reported landspout tornadoes touched down over mostly unpopulated areas near the Denver metro between 5-6pm. I was running daily errands when I noticed the exploding thunderheads around 4:30pm-- an incredible sight considering the morning had been crystal-clear without a cloud around!

By about 5:15, I started seeing organized structure in the storm that would later produce three reported touchdowns from the Lemon Gulch area (between Castle Rock & Parker) to just southeast of downtown Parker. The most well-formed, largest, and photogenic of the landspout tornadoes took a small track northeast across Lemon Gulch from 5:30-5:50pm, drifting precariously close to one large house. The event was very well covered by local news stations, as seen by the impressive live video feeds from both the 7 & 9NEWS choppers!

Apparently, the 9NEWS chopper happened to be ‘in the area’ doing traffic reports when their pilots noticed the large rotating dirt cloud over the Gulch at about the same time I started shooting my video from south Parker. Their coverage of the dusty vortex was pretty spectacular! Along with some other spectators, watching both news choppers circle the long, skinny vortex was an amazing sight! Always interesting watching peoples’ reactions when significant severe weather comes so close to a large city...

A couple of links with interesting info on this event:

Jon Davies Severe Weather Notes: Denver area landspout setup on 8-24-08