A tornado hit Colorado about 35 miles north of Denver and could be seen all the way from the state capital as it ripped apart buildings and killed animals in its path.
Weld County was partly under a tornado warning until 6pm on Monday night, with communities being torn apart. No people were reported killed by the storm.
CBS4 in Denver reported that the tornado came and went so fast that residents barely had the time to take cover.
“My husband was on top of our house yelling, ‘Get down, there’s a tornado over by Tom’s house,’” resident Carol Holder told the outlet.
Her husband Steve Holder said there wasn’t enough time to get beneath their house, so he told his family to get into a bathtub.
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“It looked like a big mud roll, it had so much dirt in it,” he said.
“We jumped in the bathtub and I got the dog and I pulled the dog over and I got my granddaughter and just kind of covered her and said ‘You’ve got to pray Lexi,’” Ms Holder added.
As the family hid in the two tubs in the home, the tornado outside destroyed some of the buildings on their property and turned over a camping trailer in the yard. One of their horses was cut by metal, and their chicken coop was destroyed.
“The only cool thing, is my boss’s truck is in the middle and it does not have any damage,” Mr Holder told CBS4. The truck was parked in between two other vehicles, one of which had shattered windows.
A dairy farm across the road from the family lost two animals as metal buildings were torn apart. There are no reports of injuries or indications that any human lives have been lost.
“God is good. This could have been much worse,” Mr Holder said. The family first received a tornado warning after it had already passed their home.
The tornado appeared to be a landspout, which grows from the bottom up.
“Once I saw the tornado, I thought, ‘OK, let’s go.’ Didn’t close the house or garage — just left it open to get out of the way,” resident Bob Ulmer told KDVR. He said he was watching TV when he heard his door blow open.
He went outside and estimated that the tornado was less than two miles away. He grabbed his dog and got in his truck, starting to drive towards the town of Firestone north of Denver in northern Colorado.
“It went straight north, which was good, ’cause I was already heading west,” Mr Ulmer said.
