Jim and Catherine Love were sitting in the living room of their home on Park Drive in Glenwood Springs during Monday night’s wind storm when it sounded like the other end of the house blew up.

Upon inspection, they discovered a large pine tree in the neighboring yard had blown over with a particularly strong wind gust onto the garage side of the house.

“It was super windy, just crazy noise, when all of a sudden it sounded like an explosion went off on the other end of the house,” Jim Love said Tuesday as he was still assessing the damage.

---

---

“Hopefully it’s just the exterior, but it did poke through the roof in the loft area behind the garage,” he said as he was getting ready to place a tarp over the holes after the tree had been removed.

“They’re such beautiful old trees, but it is something you kind of wonder about,” Love said.

---

---

Altogether, the wind storm, which brought gusts topping 60 miles per hour at times, toppled between six and eight larger trees of at least 24 inches in diameter in the Park Drive neighborhood west of Sayre Park. Two houses were damaged and at least one vehicle, Glenwood Springs Fire Department Deputy Chief Doug Gerrald said.

An unknown number of smaller trees and branches were reported down all across town, Gerrald said. 

“Two houses sustained structural damage, and one car was reported to be damaged,” he said. “A power line was also hit.”

The wind storm, which was followed by a snowstorm overnight and into Tuesday morning, also caused intermittent power outages around Glenwood Springs.

Fortunately, there were no injuries, Gerrald said.

“All the fire department did, besides making sure everyone was OK, was to contact the appropriate resources to handle things, including the city streets and electric departments,” he said.

Lucas Boyer, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Grand Junction, said they received weather spotter reports of a 65 mph wind gust around 5 p.m. five miles northwest of Glenwood Springs, and then 64 mph in town at about 7:15 p.m. Another gust topped 57 mph northeast of town about 7 p.m. 

With the wind also came a significant amount of dust, which blew in from points west of Colorado where the snow has already melted, Boyer said.

“There was a good transport of dust from all across the region, from everywhere that didn’t have snow on top of it,” he said. 

That can ultimately affect the mountain snowpack, as a layer of dirt is deposited on the snow’s surface which can then speed up the snowmelt once the temperatures rise and sunny days return.

Boyer said more precipitation is expected through Tuesday night and into Wednesday, tapering off by Wednesday night. By the weekend the temperatures in the Roaring Fork Valley are expected to push 60 degrees, and by next week it could be close to 70.  

“With the winter-to-spring transition we do see a lot of these storms with high winds, but this one was on the strong side of what is normal to come through this time of year,” he said. “We should be back to normal temperatures on Friday, with a warm-up over the weekend.”

Post Independent interim Managing Editor and senior reporter John Stroud can be reached at jstroud@postindependent.com or at 970-384-9160.