FLAGSTAFF — The National Weather Service has confirmed that two tornadoes touched down in northern Arizona during Wednesday’s severe storms, both rated EF1, KTAR News reported.
The first spun up about 6 miles south of Prescott at 7:32 a.m. and lasted roughly 14 minutes, traveling nearly 8 miles north-northeast through the Bradshaw Mountains and over Spruce Mountain before falling apart near Walker Road south of Lynx Lake. Surveyors estimated peak winds of 105 mph based on swaths of snapped and uprooted ponderosa pines. The damage was mostly to trees in a rural area east of Groom Creek, along with a road closure.
The second tornado formed south of Heber-Overgaard at 6:59 p.m., crossed State Route 260 and dissipated near State Route 277 about 11 minutes later. Its winds were estimated at 110 mph. It damaged buildings, destroyed RVs and left at least one resident homeless in the Navajo County community of about 3,000. One non-life-threatening injury was reported.
NWS Flagstaff meteorologist Jake Lewandowski told KTAR that tornadoes in Arizona are “definitely not common” but do happen from time to time. Survey teams visit damage sites to judge how strong a twister was before issuing a rating on the EF0-to-EF5 scale.
Sources: KTAR News, Arizona’s Family. Thee Arizona Times uses AI-assisted reporting reviewed against the sources listed.
Photo: Benjamin Cody / CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
