{"id":112694,"date":"2015-05-06T20:42:06","date_gmt":"2015-05-07T02:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/reader-spots-funnel-cloud-in-la-plata-county\/"},"modified":"2015-05-06T20:42:06","modified_gmt":"2015-05-07T02:42:06","slug":"reader-spots-funnel-cloud-in-la-plata-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/reader-spots-funnel-cloud-in-la-plata-county\/","title":{"rendered":"Reader spots funnel cloud in La Plata County"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Herald
Herald reader Anthony Lopez photographed this funnel cloud forming south of Durango mid-morning Tuesday. Meteorologist Joe Ramey with the Grand Junction office of the National Weather Service was surprised, as weather conditions in the area were not conducive for tornado formation.<\/span>Courtesy of Anthony Lopez<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Herald Staff Writer<\/p>\n

While it wasn\u2019t \u201cSharknado,\u201d a sighting of a funnel cloud did take place Tuesday morning in La Plata County.<\/p>\n

Herald reader Anthony Lopez sent in a photo he shot mid-morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust wanted to share a picture taken from the top of Farmington Hill looking south along the Animas (River) around 10:30 a.m. (Tuesday),\u201d he said. \u201cIt was a funnel cloud that formed and barely touched down before dissipating.\u201d<\/p>\n

While not a common phenomenon, it\u2019s not \u201csuper rare,\u201d either, said meteorologist Joe Ramey with the Grand Junction Office of the National Weather Service.<\/p>\n

His first response, before seeing the photo, was that it could not be a tornado.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m surprised to see it (Tuesday), though,\u201d he said after taking a look at the photograph. \u201cThey generally have to be attached to a thunderstorm, and the closest lightning storms to you (Tuesday) are in Taos and Red River, New Mexico, or over in Northeast Arizona, hundreds of miles away.\u201d<\/p>\n

They used to think there were one or two tornados a year in all of Western Colorado, he said, until they got more extensive radar.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow we have sensors that can even detect in-cloud lightning in addition to lightning hitting the ground,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Ramey said what he thinks happened is that a low-pressure ridge over the Four Corners formed a tight circle spinning counterclockwise that may have \u201cthrown off\u201d the funnel cloud.<\/p>\n

\u201cDurango\u2019s no different than the rest of Western Colorado,\u201d he said. \u201cTornados have happened in your area, and they\u2019ll happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n

abutler@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

reader Anthony Lopez photographed this funnel cloud forming south of Durango mid-morning Tuesday. Meteorologist Joe Ramey with the Grand Junction office of the National Weather Service was surprised, as weather conditions in the area were not conducive for tornado formation.Courtesy of Anthony Lopez Herald Staff Writer While it wasn\u2019t \u201cSharknado,\u201d a sighting of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":112695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6363],"tags":[188,13,3632,88],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-112694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ds-news","tag-dolores-star","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-tornado","tag-weather-news"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112694"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=112694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}