NWS says “It’s possible” damage caused by cold air funnel cloud

WARRICK COUNTY, Ind. (WEHT) – From flash flooding to cold air funnel clouds, the Tri-State is taking a breather after storms on May 14 left behind isolated damage and more than five inches of rain in some locations.

“We’ve had a decent amount of rain over the course of the last week or so, so the ground was pretty primed for flooding,” explains Justin Gibbs, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service (NWS) in Paducah, KY. Gibbs says a nearby area of low pressure was the root cause of heavy rain and slow-moving storms.

“With the overall slow movement of the big parent storm system, we got multiple rounds,” explains Gibbs. “So we have the rain in the morning, then we’d have it in the late morning and then another round in the afternoon, and by 9:00 or 10:00 o’clock in the evening, there have been a few areas that have had, you know, four or five rounds of showers and storms.”

While flood waters flowed below, it was the sky that stole the show with several reports of cold air funnel clouds across the Tri-State. As Gibbs explains, they are different than a typical tornado.

“It’s kind of a tornado, but not really. It’s kind of a glorified dust devil in lots of ways,” says Gibbs. “We had a weak front in the area that was shifting the wind, so the winds were shifting with height and those directional changes were leading to just a little bit of rotation. And because it was also so humid, the clouds are forming at very low levels. They were forming in that area right as the updrafts of thunderstorms get forming and creating these funnel clouds.”

Damage in Warrick County was reported near the location of one cold air funnel sighting. Gibbs says determining the exact cause of the damage could be challenging. “It’s possible that that would have been part of what caused the wind damage there,” explains Gibbs, “but it’s about equally as likely, probably, that it was a downburst or straight line wind.”

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