Rare tornado confirmed in the mountains of Colorado

A tornado touched down along Pike's Peak Highway on July 20, uprooting dozens of trees at an elevation of about 9,500 feet.

Transcript

00:00 I'm meteorologist Tony Law back on the Pikes Peak Highway just outside of Colorado Springs.

00:04 Pikes Peak sitting at about 14,000 feet and change.

00:07 We're at about 9,500 feet and believe it or not folks,

00:10 we had a tornado that came through here about 2 o'clock on Thursday.

00:13 You see some of that damage behind me here.

00:15 Multiple uprooted and snapped trees this common across this area.

00:19 This area of note was near the Crystal Creek Reservoir along the Pikes Peak Highway

00:23 where the National Weather Service office in Pueblo confirmed a tornado here in Teller County.

00:27 It was in this area where many trees were knocked down.

00:29 Given the lack of visual evidence of the tornado itself,

00:32 surveyors used tree damage to confirm the tornado.

00:35 For instance, you can see this tree falling in one direction,

00:38 but then you turn around behind you and see this tree falling in the opposite direction.

00:42 This was the case along the damage path where trees were pushed down in different directions.

00:46 Some trees were snapped, but most of the damage near the road was from uprooted trees and there were dozens.

00:52 This all indicated an EF1 tornado with wind speeds estimated at 108 miles per hour.

00:57 There was a tornado warning in effect as radar detected rotation in this area as the storm moved to the southeast,

01:03 eventually moving over Colorado Springs, bringing lots of big hail and flash flooding to the city.

01:08 Now while it is unusual to see tornadoes at this elevation, it's not completely out of the question.

01:14 In fact, the Pikes Peak region has seen several reported tornadoes over the last decade.

01:19 Reporting for AccuWeather on Pikes Peak Highway, I'm meteorologist Tony Laubach.