'We just ran out of time': Stormy weather cuts short Boulder's Fourth of July drone show

Jul. 5—Boulder's inaugural Fourth of July drone show at Folsom Field was interrupted, and ultimately cut short, by intermittent episodes of stormy, rainy weather Tuesday night.

Numerous people who were present at the event said they enjoyed the drone show, even if it was brief, but felt the event could have been better planned and organized.

"The drones were amazing... We often don't have fireworks because of all the fires, so it's really neat to see the city do that," said Elijah McClendon, who came with his wife and 11-year-old son from Erie to attend the event. "But with that said, the main event was the drones, and they cut off the drones in the very middle... To just not finish it was really not very well planned."

The afternoon of the show, the weather forecast for the evening was already grim: At 2:04 p.m., the National Weather Service in Boulder announced a severe thunderstorm watch for parts of Colorado, including Boulder County, lasting until 11 p.m Tuesday night.

By the time of the weather service notice, Boulder had already announced that the plan for the event was being changed, and that the drones might fly anytime between 8:15 and 10 p.m. and the bands might play indoors instead of on the field. Originally, the city had hoped to fly the drones at about 9:35 p.m.

The gates were scheduled to open at 7 p.m. for the event, but stormy weather delayed the start time by nearly two hours. Lindsey Galloway, who attended the event with her husband, arrived at 7 p.m. and went through security, then was immediately told to shelter in place.

"Everyone was in pretty good spirits, and just getting beers and hot dogs (at concession stands), which were open," she said.

According to Galloway, the shelter-in-place lasted until approximately 8:30 p.m. The event finally resumed at 8:50 p.m. as the weather cleared for a short while, and the night kicked off with performances by the Boulder School of Rock followed by local artists The Custom Shop-Band and Funkiphino.

The bands played indoors at the Touchdown Club, but the inclement weather returned before the evening's much-anticipated main event: the drone show.

Galloway said she enjoyed listening to the bands, but "everyone was there for the drones." When the drones finally took off just before 10 p.m., she said, it was a "pretty magical moment in the rain," but event-goers in the stadium were "bummed" when another shelter-in-place order was announced a few minutes later.

Dusty Miller, a paragliding instructor and amateur meteorologist who also came to the event, had been watching the weather radar and expected that there was going to be a window of milder weather when the drones could have been flown. Instead, he said, the drone show didn't start until after the stormy weather had already started back up.

"It seemed like they kind of waited until the perfect wrong moment to kick off the drone show, which was kind of the very tail end of the window that they had stated," said Miller. "Lightning was also visibly close by... And so it was good that they actually did eventually cancel the thing. But it was a little poor timing and poor organization that was kind of intermixed, unfortunately."

Jennifer Stark, meteorologist-in-charge at NWS Boulder, said predicting the perfect window of time for the drone show at Folsom Field was not a simple task. She said it's often not possible to predict exactly when or where thunderstorms will form, and that while the NWS had been in communication with emergency management officials about numerous Fourth of July community events, Tuesday's forecast was "really tough," and the primary concern was keeping attendees at all the community events safe.

"I get people's frustration, but it had been well forecast throughout the day that we were anticipating thunderstorm development, that it would impact some community displays," Stark said. "(We were) trying to guide decision makers to a window of opportunity to do these things. But also, we had additional thunderstorms develop behind an initial round of thunderstorms, which we had also forecasted... So yesterday was difficult."

Boulder partnered with the University of Colorado Boulder and WK Real Estate to provide the free event. The Camera reported that the entities opted for a drone show this year partly because fireworks have become more difficult to find and partly for environmental and safety reasons.

Dan Kingdom, managing broker of WK Real Estate, said the decision was made Tuesday to move forward with the event despite the poor weather forecast, in part because there had been no Fourth of July celebration for the past three years due to the pandemic and then scheduling difficulties.

The organizers opted to condense the event schedule, cutting most parts of the show except for the live music and the drones. Kingdom said they wanted to give the bands a chance to perform because they had committed to the show well in advance.

"Instead of canceling it earlier in the day, we decided to make the most of it that we could, and everybody did the best job they could," said Kingdom. "Ultimately, we just ran out of time."

Kingdom also confirmed his company helped sponsor the event and he had a hand in organizing it, but said it was CU Boulder that made most of the weather-related decisions, including the shelter-in-place orders.

Steve Hurlbert, chief spokesperson for CU Boulder, said that although the event was hosted at Folsom Field on campus, the university did not organize the drone show, and Hurlbert referred questions back to the city of Boulder and WK Real Estate.

A representative for the city could not be reached for comment.