GLENNS FERRY, Idaho (CBS2) — Meteorologists with the National Weather Service in Boise spent the day surveying an area between Mountain Home and Glenns Ferry where they say a tornado touched down Monday.
CBS 2 joined them as they searched the area.
It was a short drive through muddy terrain before the only option was to get out and walk.
Using their radar Senior Meteorologist Stephen Park and Meteorologist Korri Anderson mapped out the area where the tornado likely touched down.
The goal of the survey is to learn a little bit more about the tornado. They say tornadoes happen in the entire area of southwest Idaho and southeast Oregon happen about 2-3 times a year.
A lot of tornadoes aren't powerful enough to show up on radar.
"I've been working here since 2012 and it was the most powerful circulation that I've seen on radar here," Anderson said.
Anderson says he was surprised to see how many people were able to capture video and pictures of the tornado considering the remote location.
"The video and pictures we've seen are good and with the some of the terrain you can't really tell how wide it was at the surface in very many of the pictures," Park said, So there's a lot of unknowns.
Park has surveyed sizable tornadoes in Texas, Oklahoma and Nebraska but this is the first time he's surveyed in this area or in sagebrush terrain.
"I'm not exactly sure what it's going to look like, obviously looking for fresh damage. If we see anything torn up and it looks grayed an it's obviously been laying their awhile that's obviously not what we're looking for," Park said. "One would like to think you'd see a lot of it in one area if the tornado was strong enough for that."
Together we embarked on a four mile hike to the location, surveying for ripped up sagebrush along the way. That got us up to the top of a hill with a good vantage point.
But they say they weren't able to find anything that showed clear damage and would rate it an EF0, the lowest on the scale.
"They most often happen over the farmland which makes them very difficult to rate even if it was say a strong tornado. There is just not anything for it to damage therefore because the way the damage scale is structured, if it doesn't damage anything it gets an EF0"
The last time the NWS Boise issued a tornado warning was back in 2012. While they are rare they say these storms have the potential to do a lot of damage so it’s lucky that this one happened in such a remote area.
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