Did a tornado touch down in Tulare County? Video shows funnel movement

As if the heavy rain and threat of flood wasn’t enough to deal with the past couple of days, residents in Tulare County suddenly were under a tornado warning.

It happened around 5:15 p.m. on Tuesday with the National Weather Service in Hanford issuing its first tornado warning since March 2020 — this one directed for those Tulare County.

A funnel cloud, which looks like the top of a tornado, was spotted in Woodlake and posed a threat of becoming an actual tornado.

“Take Cover indoors now!” the County of Tulare government posted on social media. “Stay away from windows and get to the inmost room of a building to take cover.”

Turns out, the storm weakened over the next 20-30 minutes.

The funnel cloud never actually touched ground to form into a tornado.

And the tornado warning eventually was called off.

“It was pretty close (to becoming a tornado),” NWS meteorologist JP Kalb said of the funnel cloud. “It would’ve needed a lot of updraft. We were seeing some rotation of the funnel cloud on the radar.

“But basically, the storm started to not rotate as much and was losing strength.”

The NWS reported that the last tornado to actually touch ground in the central San Joaquin Valley was in September 2020, occurring in Fresno County.

“It is fairly rare for a tornado to happen in the Valley,” Kalb said. “Maybe 1 to 5 tornadoes in the Valley over a year, most years. Usually very weak but they can still be dangerous tornadoes.”

This story was originally published January 10, 2023 at 9:16 PM.