Arizona Faces Rare Tornado Outbreak as Golf Ball-Sized Hail Hits Southwest

Yet another bout of severe weather struck the U.S. Southwest on Thursday, as the Four Corners region began assessing damage from overnight tornadoes that tore away roofs, dropped trees onto homes and downed power lines.

The injuries were not life-threatening, but they remain notable for an area better known for intense heat. The region has also experienced an unusually wet fall, with El Niño conditions sending successive tropical systems from the Pacific toward the region and causing floods across the Grand Canyon and surrounding deserts.

Now, golf-ball-sized hail and tornadoes have joined the severe weather mix. National Weather Service meteorologists suspect at least three tornadoes touched down as storms swept across central Arizona late Wednesday.

The severe weather hit during Lenna Landy’s yoga routine in Overgaard, a community of about 3,000 people roughly 140 miles (225km) northeast of Phoenix. Landy had ignored alerts about a possible tornado, but the storm struck.

“It was like Zeus-was-angry kind of level, of thunder cracks,” Landy said.

The power went out, her house shook and Landy couldn’t find her glasses.

“If this is my end, I won’t see it coming,” she recalled thinking. “The scariest part was just like, how quickly it came on.”

The storm peeled off nearby roofs, shattered windows and blew a shed into a home, she said. A spruce tree in her yard was split in half.

Still more severe weather, including large hail, struck Thursday, with much of Arizona under tornado and flood watches. Similar weather soaked New Mexico, while large parts of Utah and Colorado were under flood watches and warnings.

Warm, moist air moving north fuels storms coming in from the California coast. Changing winds can make them spin, creating the conditions for tornadoes, said Ryan Bernhart, a weather service meteorologist in Flagstaff.

“This is very unusual for this area at this time of the year,” Bernhart said.

Tornadoes are somewhat but not exceptionally unusual in Arizona. Notable outbreaks happened in 2019 and 2010.

Strong winds toppled trees in Flagstaff and Mesa, with some landing on walls and carports. A few dozen ponderosa pines more than 30ft (9 meters) tall fell down in the Coconino national forest, north-west of Flagstaff.

“These are not small trees that are down,” Bernhart said. “These are pretty strong trees that had been knocked down.”

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