{"id":112719,"date":"2015-05-05T23:24:32","date_gmt":"2015-05-06T05:24:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/is-it-a-tornado-sighting\/"},"modified":"2015-05-05T23:24:32","modified_gmt":"2015-05-06T05:24:32","slug":"is-it-a-tornado-sighting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/is-it-a-tornado-sighting\/","title":{"rendered":"Is it a tornado sighting?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Anthony
Anthony Lopez caught this shot of a funnel cloud forming south of Durango mid-morning Tuesday. Meteorologist Joe Ramey of the Grand Junction office of the National Weather Service was surprised, as weather conditions in the area were not what he would expect for a tornado to occur.<\/span>Courtesy of Anthony Lopez<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

While it wasn\u2019t \u201cSharknado,\u201d a sighting of a funnel cloud did take place in La Plata County on Tuesday morning.<\/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. today,\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. \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":"

Weather service says …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":112720,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[13,3632,88],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-112719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","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\/112719","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=112719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112719"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=112719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}