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SIERRA VISTA — A funnel cloud Friday afternoon raised eyebrows of police, residents and weather spotters.
Another smaller funnel was reported by Sierra Vista police personnel about 10 minutes after the first one retracted into the thunderhead.
The funnel clouds were seen by enough people to have an advisory put out on it by the National Weather Service’s Tucson office.
Marshall Bryan was mowing his yard on Shawnee Drive in Hereford when he stopped about 1:55 p.m. to look up and see how much time he had before the rain.
  
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Instead he saw a funnel cloud to the east of his home, which is west of Highway 92.
“I saw this cloud drop down and it was headed north,” Bryan said.
Bryan ran inside to get his camera. He was able to snap three pictures and described the funnel cloud as probably being “four to five miles” long. At first the cloud’s tail was straight, then the bottom bent to the north in the direction he said it was heading. Almost as quickly as it came down it was gone.
Bryan has lived in the area since 1961 and had not until Friday afternoon seen a funnel cloud near his home, though he said he’s heard of others who have.
“It’s kind of unusual for this area,” Bryan said.
Multiple reports of a funnel cloud in the Sierra Vista area came into Cochise County Sheriff’s Office dispatch center, dispatchers said.
Sierra Vista police Cpl. Lawrence Boutte said several city officers saw the funnel cloud as it went up and down several times. Then about 2:10 p.m., the department’s evidence clerk thought she saw another, the corporal said.
Katie Berry, 14, spotted the cloud about 1:50 p.m. and took some pictures from her Hereford home on Keeling Road.
Her mother, Maggie Thuma, said it was a “big gray funnel cloud,” pretty high in the sky at about 500 feet.
They weren’t scared, but they were rather fascinated that it appeared.
“Then it just disappeared into the sky,” Thuma said.
Michael Rivera lives south of Camino Principal. Looking to northeast, he saw what appeared to be about a mile-long funnel cloud.
“I’m going to say it was probably parallel to the mall, or farther south. It was kind of hard to see (once the rains came),” Rivera said.
The ominous clouds that come through during the rainy season must be respected, he said.
“Those are the sort of clouds that can bring on tornados,” Rivera said.
The National Weather Service in Tucson says Rivera is absolutely correct about potential for such clouds. The weather service’s Doppler radar showed a strong thunderstorm in the area at the time of the funnel cloud sightings, but there were no signs of strong air rotation.
This sort of funnel cloud usually doesn’t last long, but if they do touch down, they can do damage. And if one does touch down, the weather service advises people to move indoors and stay away from their windows.
The last widely corroborated funnel cloud that appeared above Sierra Vista was at about 6 p.m. on Aug. 19, 2005, about three to five miles north of Buena High School.
It, too, started to extend downward, but then withdrew back into the storm cloud. The weather service said that one showed signs of some weak air rotation.
The forecast for Friday night and Saturday morning was for continued moisture and unstableness in the atmosphere, and flooding problems and rising washes and streams to continue as any rainfall will affect the already saturated earth, according to the National Weather Service.
A slight increase in shower and thunderstorm activity is expected today by the National Weather Service, as an upper level disturbance moves westward across Mexico with the northern fringes of the system impacting Southern Arizona. Strong gusty winds and dangerous lightning can be expected.
A Pacific trough will approach the region early next week and should push the moisture to the east, decreasing the local chances for rain through the end of next week, the weather service says.
REPORTER Gentry Braswell can be reached at 515-4680 or by e-mail at gentry.braswell@svherald.com. Managing Editor Keith J. Allen contributed to this report.
asinine wrote on Aug 6, 2007 7:12 PM: