ELBERT — A twister danced on the plains Monday afternoon, leveling two barns and uprooting trees in Elbert County, as the Front Range endured its eighth consecutive day of tornadic weather.

The weather, however, isn’t that unusual for early June, said National Weather Service meteorologist Kyle Fredin.

Recent dry years and technology that delivers instant weather warnings and dramatic photos of funnel clouds and twisters for TV and the Internet probably make typical June thunderstorms seem more prolific, he said.

“I know awareness is heightened, and I know it’s been pretty active every day for a week, but June is our stormiest month,” he said. “I know from sitting in front of this radar for 15 years that, yeah, this happens.”

Monday’s twister was on the ground in Elbert County for only about six minutes, according to the National Weather Service.

The tornado, about 100 yards wide, leveled two barns less than a mile apart west of the town of Elbert about 1:30 p.m. The storm cut through a grove of piñon and ponderosa trees, snapping 2-foot-thick trunks.

One barn had sentimental and historic value to Bryce Gresham, 82. He leases the barn now, but it was built in 1918 by his father’s friend, he explained, tears welling in his eyes.

Gresham, who sleeps in the bedroom where he was born, has seen no twister leave as much damage on his 3,000- acre farm and ranch, he said.

“I figured I could outrun it,” Gresham said of the twister’s approach. “When it headed toward my property, I just backed up to get out of its way. There were light poles in the air and wires were flashing.

“When it happens, you don’t think about being afraid.”

A mile away, Phil Brown’s 70-year-old barn was leveled, a nearby cinder-block shed was torn open like a bag of chips and tools were scattered.

Brown ran for cover after he looked out from his porch and saw the funnel cloud spiraling to the ground and toward him.

“Honestly, you always hear about the noise they make, like a freight train,” he said. “I heard none of that.”

In the aftermath, the family rushed to find their animals. The dog, which had taken cover, came home first, but a steer had to be cut free from the barn. A goat was still missing Monday afternoon, but another stood atop the wreckage of the barn.

The Browns’ house had only a broken window.

“I’m just glad everybody is OK,” said Brown’s wife, Irene, surveying the wreckage. “Everything else can be replaced.”

Adele Waits watched from her house southeast of the Browns’ as one funnel cloud whipped itself into a fury. It was the first she had ever seen.

“We were watching the rotation in the clouds and it just kept gathering more and more,” she said.

June Turner of Franktown spotted the twister after her weather radio sounded an alert. She has lived near Franktown more than 30 years, and she’s seen tornadoes before.

“Not this big,” she said. “This one was really big.”

The turbulent weather covered a wide swath. At one point Monday afternoon, a tornado watch — meaning conditions favorable for twisters — was in effect for 15 eastern Colorado counties and 32 counties in western Nebraska.

Staff writer Joey Bunch and researcher Barry Osborne contributed to this story.

June soggy, but metro yearly totals on track

The metro region’s official weather-monitoring station at Denver International Airport — near the heart of the last week’s storms — has measured 2.25 inches of precipitation this month, which is 1.46 inches above normal. This time a year ago, DIA had received 0.73 inches for the month.

For the year, metro Denver has received 7.77 inches, only about a half-inch above average. This time last year,the metro region had netted only 3.04 inches of moisture all year.

Chances of afternoon thunderstorms will persist Wednesday, but warmer, dryer weather is expected to follow, National Weather Service meteorologist Kyle Fredin said.

“The monsoon season starts the second week of July, and we start this all over,” Fredin said. Joey Bunch, The Denver Post

A picture-perfect effort

For an out-of-work aircraft executive, Darrel Watson’s a pretty good photographer.

Watson, 60, was home with his wife, Wally, on Monday afternoon when he stepped outside to look at ominous clouds. Minutes later, with an Olympus C-4000 Zoom digital camera in hand, he captured spectacular images of a twister that descended about a half-mile away. Watson and his wife live in Kelly Airpark, a development of homes surrounding an airfield just west of Elbert. He has been looking for work since the economic downturn meant the end of his job as vice president of quality assurance at AAI Acquisition Inc.

Photography, he said, is only a hobby.

“I only had one photography class, and that was 100 years ago” Kevin Vaughan, The Denver Post