Tucson "Tornado"

Well, it certainly looks like a tornado to me!


Photo by JIM BABER/for the Tucson Citizen. (Caption by Tucson Citizen) Some residents thought this column of air, seen near Interstate 10 and Wilmot Road at about 4:20 p.m. yesterday, looked like a tornado. Weather officials say it was a dust devil.

Hey, some dust-devils can convert into tornadoes if they get captured by a thunderstorm. If it looks like a tornado, to me, it's a tornado! Yet the Weather Service apparently disagrees - we'll have to break out the meteorological dictionary to get our definitions in order:

The funnel-shaped column of air rising on the Southeast Side was a dust devil, (National Weather Service meteorologist Gary) Zell said.

Zell said the dust devil got caught up in a passing thunderstorm, which is why it looked larger than a usual dust devil, extending from the ground to the clouds

July has been hot, and not as wet as normal (the monsoon got off to a late start):

However, last month's total rainfall at Tucson International Airport was 0.72 of an inch, 1.35 inches below normal.

The average high in July was 104.2, said meteorologist Gary Zell of the National Weather Service. That's 4.6 degrees higher than normal.

... The warm month started in the middle of a tie-breaking streak of 39 days exceeding 100 degrees, which ended July 22. Tucson has not been higher than 100 degrees since.