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MORGAN COUNTY -- Many Wasatch Front residents heard the wind howl Monday night. A home in Morgan County endured a storm strong enough to make the owner wonder whether a tornado blew through.
At Clifton Jenkins' home in Enterprise, Utah, he had a lot of cleaning up to do Tuesday morning after fierce winds dropped three big trees on his property.
It likely was not a tornado, but around midnight, it sure felt that way to Jenkins.
"Just a few minutes before midnight, the wind started to blow," he said.
Jenkins lost three big spruce trees in the storm -- one that towered around 75 feet high landed on his house, above his bedroom where he lay.
The storm was nearly deafening, he says. "I heard the tree go over, but it was so loud it was not really distinguishable," Jenkins said.
He says the storm roared for a minute, subsided, roared again, then stopped.
"All of this happened in less than a couple of minutes," he said.
He got up, looked out the window and all he could see was tree limbs and needles. He feels lucky that tree did not crush his bedroom, with him in it.
The wind also damaged a shed and a greenhouse, in line with the trees, but neighbors were spared any real damage.
"There was no lightning, no thunder, no rain," Jenkins said.
So what was it?
KSL meteorologist Len Randolph said, "First of all, no tornado, but there were wind gusts going through the canyon around Morgan, Enterprise, all through there, of 30 to 35 miles per hour."
Randolph scoured the data and found nothing to substantiate a tornado, but soils are saturated and Randolph says the force of strong winds can drop big trees.
"The roots only go down below the surface of the earth about two to three feet," he said. "So, when that wind pushes against that pine tree that's so full of needles, that pine tree is going to tip over."
Jenkins says he saw a tornado in the Morgan Valley in 1973 and believes it could have been a circular storm last night.
Despite the expensive clean-up, Jenkins feels fortunate.
"Heavens yes, this could have been a real disaster," he said.
The Morgan County Sheriff's Office also spoke to KSL. They received no calls about damage last night and hadn't heard about Jenkins' story until we called, so it seems the damage was very isolated.
E-mail: jboal@ksl.com
