Salt Lake City's tornado: 10 years later

Dark clouds twisted in the sky, but there was no mention of them on the radio.

At University Hopstial, Dr. Karen Miller searched the airwaves for some news of the forming storm but found nothing. She called the nanny, told her not to take the boys to the gym that summer afternoon. Miller warned her colleagues that a tornado was coming to Salt Lake City.

"They thought I was nuts," she said.

Then the mass of wind touched down on the city's west side.

It was just after noon on Aug. 11, 1999.

Debris swirled in the air as the storm spun through downtown, blowing out windows at the Delta Center and uprooting trees at the Capitol and LDS Temple.

The storm twisted from downtown into the upper Avenues in a matter of minutes, throwing a two-by-four through Miller's back window, narrowly missing her two young sons and slamming into a wall in the front room of their 18th Avenue home.

The nanny dressed Miller's sons, Nels and Cameron Ballard, in jeans and coats to protect them against flying debris and hurried them into the basement. Cameron, then 4, felt as though they were down there for hours.

It wasn't the biggest of storms. Few visible signs remain. But for those who saw it, felt it, had their lives changed by the flying debris, its effects can still be felt a decade later.

It wasn't the first. From 1950 through 2005, 121 tornadoes have touched down in Utah, according to the National Weather Service, though they are small, almost negligible, compared to the twisters of the Midwest.

Few, if any, would have thought a real, bonified tornado in Salt Lake would be possible.

Not long before the storm, Miller told her children about the Rocky Mountains, how they protected the city from such assaults.

But as the twister proved, the impossible storm was anything but.

On that day 10 years ago, thunderstorms formed over the Oquirrhs as colder air from Nevada moved into Utah and met with warm, southerly winds. By 12:41 the tornado had touched down near 1340 West and 400 South.

By 12:45, the F2 storm moved downtown. By 12:55, it was gone, all of it over in 10 minutes.

But in that short time, it devastated parts of downtown and the Avenues.

A tent housing part of the Outdoor Retailer Convention was destroyed. In the tent, flying debris struck Allen A. Crandy in the head, killing the 38-year-old Las Vegas man, a husband, a father and a champion for autistic children.

His was the only death, though 80 other were injured, some critically. Three hundred buildings and homes were damaged, 34 left uninhabitable. Damage estimates hovered around $170 million.

A city was left to pick up the pieces.