WHNT Weather

Interesting Picture from Colbert County

Posted on: 8:13 pm, August 10, 2012, by Jason Simpson

This came in via in the Huntsville NWSchat earlier from our friend Mike Smith at the Colbert County EMA:

“ColbertEMA-Smith
8:02 HUN and Media: This is the picture of the cloud that Colbert had several reports on as a possible Tornado. Happened around 4:15pm just NW of Cherokee, toward Riverton. http://www.michaeldsmith.info/cherokeescud.jpg”

Note the wording here is “reports.” We don’t know of any damage that was done, and based on radar data at the time, it would be hard to confirm this is a “funnel cloud.” That does not mean it wasn’t a funnel cloud; it just means that based on what you can see in the image, you don’t have enough information to report it as a definite rotating funnel. If you were watching this in real-time, you would want to see if it maintained its shape for a few minutes, watch how it moves, and see if there is rotation above the appendage. A persistent, rotating funnel cloud is easy to spot live on the scene, but it can be tough to confirm it from a single picture without other storm structure visible.