EFU Tornado — San Juan, Utah

2024-07-20 · near Verdure, San Juan, Utah

Event narrative

One of several thunderstorms across Southeast Utah on the afternoon of July 20th began to rotate and produced a landspout tornado near Verdure in San Juan County, UT, along US Highway 191. This landspout was reported to the Grand Junction NWS office by a trained spotter, and this report was later confirmed by images and video provided by a media partner in the Salt Lake City NWS office's area.

Wider weather episode

A push of drier air was dropping into eastern Utah and western Colorado from the north on the afternoon of the 20th. As dry air filtered into the northern half of the region, deeper moisture remained entrenched over the southern half. With better moisture and instability in this area, scattered to widespread showers and thunderstorms formed over the higher terrain and drifted out over adjacent valleys. One of these storms encountered a source of modest surface vorticity, and began to weakly rotate, eventually producing a landspout tornado.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (37.7800, -109.3500)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1206662. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.