Denver Tornadoes Caught on Video

Severe weather struck the Denver, Colorado area Sunday afternoon, sparking at least 4 tornado reports.

CBS4 has video of one of the twisters, along with photos. ABC7 also has an article with photos.

It appeared that the National Weather Service did not issue any Severe Thunderstorm Warnings prior to the storms, but after spotter reports, they were wise to issue a couple of Tornado Warnings, according to the WeatherMatrix archives.

The storm reports were not far from the Denver International Airport, according to a plot in AccuWeather.com RadarPlus:

In fact, the airport reported a tornado in their weather observations, stating that it began at 0039Z and ended at 0105Z (raw obs available here if you're interested).

RADAR LOOPS:

According to the Denver radar animation archived from RadarPlus, the storms broke out from another storm's outflow boundary around 5:15 p.m. and had completely dissipated by 7:45 p.m. (see also zoomed loop of affected area with the tornado reports plotted).

BUT WERE THEY REALLY TORNADOES?

It is interesting to note, if you watch the video closely, there is a point at which the lady videographer pans to the right to show two additional funnels, which her companion labels as "dust devils". I am not 100% sure the main funnel is not a dust devil, or at least a gustnado (both of which form differently than classic supercell tornadoes). There is an awful lot of sunshine in the video and the clouds don't look too severe. Of course, the storms were decreasing at the time of the reports (see radar animation).