Incredible microburst damage

[Jody Radzik]

Sometime in the beginning of summer the Pecos Wilderness in the Santa Fe National Forest experienced an incredible downburst or some other, as of yet to be determined phenomenon:

http://www.koat.com/video/13910683/index.html

 

[joel ewing]

My God, that IS incredible!
I guess if it were up to me to solve, I'd research the radar archives to see if any kind of storm event could possibly match up to that damage. Just think...if you were hiking amongst those mountain tops...there was absolutely NO place to hide. Each and every tree was down.
I believe that a fellow stormtrack poster from Romania sent similar photos from the mountaintops in Czechslovakia or the surrounding areas earlier this year.
It's hard to imagine such power. I would LOVE to witness that from a safe vantage point....if there is such a place.

 

[Mike Kovalchick]

It looks very similar to the Routt Divide Blowdown that happened on October 25, 1997 near the Continental Divide in Colorado.

http://www.cora.nwra.com/~snook/blowdown.html

 

[Robert Dewey]

Incredible!

Looks like pretty intense downburst damage... Using damage indicators from the EF scale, uprooting and snapping softwoods takes a wind speed around 70-130MPH (LB to UB). With the wet soil conditions, I'm sure the winds in the area of downed trees didn't need to be UB, so I think it's safe to estimate that winds were at least 100MPH.

 

[Jody Radzik]

Just think...if you were hiking amongst those mountain tops...there was absolutely NO place to hide.

I live about 13 miles as the crow flies from this place. I can't recall any single event that would have caused this. It may have been that I was chasing in OK or TX at the time.

I'm sure the NWS in ABQ is on the case. I'll try to find out just what they come up with.