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Tornado-like formation seen north of Garapan
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Posted on Sep 13 2011
EMO, however, could not verify sighting
By Ferdie de la Torre
Reporter
Reporter
A tornado-like formation was seen by many people, including motorists, yesterday afternoon north of Garapan, but the Emergency Management Office said they could not verify the report.
Some employees at the U.S. District Court for the NMI took photos of the tornado or twister-like formation from their office on the second floor of the Horiguchi Building. Some motorists also grabbed their cellphones and cameras to take photos.
A court staff said after seeing the formation she immediately called her mother from her home so she could watch it.
The staff said after a minute the funnel went up to the clouds, disappeared, then two to three small funnels were briefly seen.
The court employee said when she saw the twister-like formation she was stunned because three weeks ago she had a dream that a tornado hit Saipan.
EMO’s geophysical seismic technician/supervisor John Takai Camacho said they received calls from the public about a tornado-like formation north of Garapan, but they cannot verify the reports because they didn’t see the phenomenon.
“We checked with the U.S. National Weather Service and even them they don’t have any information on that,” Camacho said.
Unless they could see the photos and verify their authenticity, they cannot tell if it’s a tornado or a waterspout.
Camacho said it is called a tornado when it touches land, but when it hits water it is a waterspout.
A tornado or waterspout reportedly began with the formation of clouds called a funnel cloud.
A funnel cloud, according to Wikipedia, is a funnel-shaped cloud of condensed water droplets, associated with a rotating column of air and extending from the base of a cloud but not reaching the ground or a water surface.
All tornadoes begin as funnel clouds, but many funnel clouds do not reach ground contact and so don’t become tornadoes.
