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CANNONVILLE, Garfield County — The National Weather Service says a "wet microburst" from a thunderstorm is to blame for tearing a roof off a home and other damage reported in a southern Utah town Sunday afternoon, not a tornado as authorities had initially thought.
The Garfield County Sheriff's Office reported that deputies responded to a report of a tornado ripping the roof off of a single-wide trailer house in Cannonville at about 3:45 p.m. Sunday.
"The winds were strong enough to lift part of the roof across the highway into another yard," authorities wrote in a news release.
Denise Dastrup, a spokeswoman for the sheriff's office, added nobody was injured and the house is still considered livable.
Weather service meteorologists told KSL on Monday that they reviewed damage photos, radar and other materials after the fact and determined on Monday that a "wet microburst" — a mixture of a strong wind burst with heavy rainfall — pushed through the area at the time, resulting in the damage.
The agency issued a severe thunderstorm warning for the Cannonville area shortly after 3 p.m. on Sunday. It appears windspeeds reached between 50-60 mph at about 3:25 p.m., approximately 20 minutes before the sheriff's office received the damage call.
Meanwhile, the National Weather Service's Las Vegas office tweeted Monday that it issued two tornado warnings in two areas near the Utah, Nevada and Arizona borders on Sunday. Meteorologists tweeted there were "two distinct areas of rotation near where the warnings were issued and tornados were reported."
A very unstable atmosphere yesterday produced a CONFIRMED cone-shaped tornado south of St. George. Very rare to see here in the Desert Southwest. #utwx#nvwx#azwx 🌪️
— Matthew Johnson (@KSL_Matt) August 22, 2022
📍: St. George, UT
📸: Allison Madsen pic.twitter.com/QshhpkYChF
KSL received several photos and videos of apparent tornadoes from the St. George area. KSL meteorologist Matt Johnson said storms on Sunday produced at least one confirmed "cone-shaped tornado" south of St. George, though there have been no reports of damage.
Tornadoes are rare but not completely unheard of in Utah. The weather service says there are at least two twisters in the Beehive State every year.
They are even rarer in the Las Vegas area. The agency's Las Vegas office says there have only been 42 confirmed tornadoes reported in the Clark and Lincoln counties in Nevada and Arizona's Mohave County combined since 1950.
The microburst and tornadoes were both a result of monsoonal storms in the region this weekend, which also caused widespread flooding in the Moab area in southeast Utah. Storms on Friday are also blamed for flash flooding at Zion National Park that swept away an Arizona woman hiking in a slot canyon.
Severe storms were reported in the Washington County area again on Monday; however, Monday was generally drier across most of the state. That trend is expected to continue on Tuesday before another wave of monsoonal moisture returns by the middle of the week, according to the National Weather Service.
Full seven-day forecasts for areas across Utah can be found online, at the KSL Weather Center.
Contributing: Simone Seikaly, KSL NewsRadio
