The overnight wind storm that brought gusts approaching 100 mph to Colorado’s Front Range this week also brought a large tree into Renee Sherman’s Fort Collins bedroom.
Around 2 a.m. Thursday, Sherman said she already wasn’t sleeping well and started to become concerned about the wind gusts.
“Is that a tornado?” she wondered.
Then she heard a crash.
“What’s that?” she asked her partner.
“That’s a tree that just came through our roof,” was the reply.
The neighbor’s tree, believed to be around 150 years old, “just snapped” and fell onto Sherman’s home in west Old Town.
“We are counting our lucky stars that this tree did not penetrate our roof, only the branches came through,” Sherman wrote to the Coloradoan in an email.
Sherman and her partner did not sleep that night, she said in an interview with the Coloradoan.
Instead, they called the insurance company and a resoration company to get the ball rolling.
The next day, their neighbors were on the ball. SavATree and Fine Tree Service came out with two large cranes, a bucket truck, more equipment about 10 workers: “a very talented tree crew to remove this ancient tree from our roof.”
“I’m so thankful that we didn’t get hurt,” Sherman said. The tree had caved in the roof.
“I’m a Colorado native so I’m used to winds,” Sherman said. “But I’ve never witnessed anything like this.”
Sherman says her experience can serve as a reminder to homeowners to have their trees examined.
“The forestry department said it has been so dry and to think of these old trees like spaghetti — they snap when dry and bends when wet,” Sherman said.
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Windstorm causes tree to crash into Fort Collins home