Hurricane-force winds were anticipated across southeast Wyoming on Friday, and they didn't disappoint. Wind gusts of up to 87 mph from the north-northwest tore off roofs and uprooted trees before the day was done.
Amanda Dougherty, a 4-H educator with the University of Wyoming’s Albany County Extension Office, was going about a regular, if blustery, day at the Albany County Fairgrounds. She wasn’t in her office in the fairgrounds activity building when the persistently strong wind gusts decided to raise the roof.
“It happened shortly after lunch hour,” she said. “It felt like the winds had picked up a bit, and the people inside the building said it sounded like a sign was blowing over. Then, it all happened very suddenly.”
Taylor Haley, the Albany County Fairgrounds director, said the activity building is currently closed. She wants to wait until the contractors called in to inspect the damage give her the thumbs-up.
“We had some straight-line winds coming through Laramie, and it somehow started to pull the end of the PVC roofing that was on the membrane,” she said. “It started to pull that up, and then the rest of the membrane just came with it.”
That’s the third time in the last year that there’s been wind damage at the Albany County Fairgrounds. Haley recalled an incident in June 2025 that lifted a roof off one of the shed row barns, and it ended up in a neighbor’s yard.
“We've had some major winds in Laramie this year, and we're supposed to have more in the coming days,” she said.
Different Direction
Matthew McLaughlin, general forecaster with the National Weather Service (NWS) office in Cheyenne, confirmed that a High Wind Warning is in effect for south-central Wyoming through mid-day Tuesday. Winds will be strong, reaching up to 45 mph, but shouldn’t reach the same intensity as those on Friday.
The strongest gust recorded on Friday was 87 mph on Pilot Hill, east of Laramie. Gusts of up to 79 mph were recorded at the F.E. Warren Air Force Base near Cheyenne, and 69 mph wind gusts were recorded at Laramie Regional Airport.
“A windstorm producing these types of winds, especially of that magnitude, isn't unheard of,” he said. “What was a little bit unusual about Friday was that the max wind gusts weren’t in the wind-prone areas and came from a different direction."
McLaughlin said southeast Wyoming usually experiences westerly winds, and many structures are designed to withstand them from that direction. Friday’s windstorm came from the north-northwest, which exacerbated their intensity.
“There was a low-pressure system that settled over Hudson Bay in northeastern Canada that funneled air through the Great Lakes and put the jet stream right along our Wyoming-Nebraska state line,” he said. “That generated the north-northwest wind direction, which wasn't necessarily the most beneficial or the most common that we've seen for the area.”
The winds in Torrington were strong enough to blow the metal roof off the Pinnacle Bank building. It sailed across the street and crumbled in an alleyway, severing a power line during its descent.
McLaughlin wasn’t surprised by the destruction caused by these wind gusts. Hurricane-force winds aren’t necessarily rare, but they’re entirely different when they come from a different direction.
“I'm not an engineer, but I would say that Friday’s wind direction did play a lot into that damage,” he said. “Structures are used to having all that pressure push against them from the west, not necessarily from the north, and that was most of Friday’s wind.”
Never Again?
Haley said the damage to the activity building at the Albany County Fairgrounds wasn’t enough to cause lasting damage. She expects the building to reopen before the end of the week.
“We were going to have to have that membrane replaced anyway,” she said. “It was installed when my mother worked out here, over 20 years ago. I’m waiting to see and get quotes from several different companies.”
There will probably be more windstorms in southeast Wyoming this winter, but they probably won’t be as destructive as Friday’s windstorm. McLaughlin described it as “a unique scenario” that isn’t easily replicated.
“The low-pressure system sitting over the Hudson Bay area is shifting westward,” he said. “It won’t be directly over the Great Lakes area, which gave us that aggressive northerly component on Friday.”
The forecast is still dry and windy, but not to the extent experienced in southeast Wyoming last week. There could be a few snowflakes in the northern Laramie Range, but the worst of the wind is over, for now.
“Everything in weather is repeatable, but we are not looking at another north-northwest windstorm, at least through Sunday,” McLaughlin said. “Wind direction played a lot into what we saw on Friday.”
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
