Video captures funnel cloud seen over Cedar City
CEDAR CITY – In the midst of a somewhat tempestuous afternoon of weather Thursday in parts of Southern Utah, a small funnel cloud was spotted over Cedar City.
Cedar City resident Josh Eisenach, who owns a lawn care business, said he was working outside in the yard at a home on Ridge Road in the Leigh Hill area when he noticed a dark funnel cloud beginning to descend from the clouds to the northwest about 4:30 p.m. He pulled out his phone and captured footage of the event.
“We seem to get a funnel every year around this time, usually around Enoch,” Eisenach said, adding that it is the second time he’s seen one in the Cedar City area in the past six years, although he’s occasionally seen others in his home state of Colorado.
“I’m from Colorado and know funnels,” he said.
Although funnel clouds are not unheard of in Utah, they are a fairly rare phenomenon, meteorologists say.
“Funnel clouds can occur anywhere if you get the right environment,” Eric Schoening of the National Weather Service in Salt Lake City previously told St. George News. They typically occur during late afternoon thunderstorms.
Funnel clouds are usually not dangerous and rarely touch the ground, Schoening added. However, when a funnel cloud does touch the ground, it becomes a tornado.
An average of two tornado sightings are reported each year in Utah, mostly in the warmer months between May and September. Utah’s most notable and destructive tornado was an F2 category tornado that cut through downtown Salt Lake City on Aug. 11, 1999, killing one person and causing an estimated $172 million worth of damage.
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