The funnel cloud that touched down in Utah County Tuesday sent residents scurrying for . . . their cameras.
Dozens of residents hauled out video and still cameras and clicked away while the ominous funnel drifted along the eastside mountain range. Then they called the local news media, offering to share their films and photos of the weird weather phenomenon."We probably had three dozen people call us," said Robert Walz, Utah County reporter for KSL TV. "There were so many people saying, `Hey, I got some video of this.' People have such accessibility to cameras now. It was amazing."
Not just any cameras, either. Many of the people who contacted the station captured images of the funnel cloud using state-of-the-art equipment, including semi-professional video and digital still cameras.
Walz said it was a first to have so many people offering such high quality images of an event. That's an indication of both how widespread camcorders are (the number of households with camcorders has doubled since 1990) and how the line between professional and consumer electronic products is blurring.
The Electronic Industries Association even has a term to describe inclusion of high-end technology in products aimed at the consumer market: "prosumer."
Scott Briggs of Mapleton, for instance, used his Sony CCD VX3 Procam - a semiprofessional video camera. Briggs, managing director of the physical plant at Brigham Young University, bought the camera for use in his water-ski instruction business.
Briggs had just stepped outside his home when he noticed "a very unusual cloud formation," though the funnel hadn't formed yet. Briggs developed his sensitivity to weather conditions in a previous career as a Lear jet pilot.
He retrieved his camera and returned outside just as the funnel cloud took shape.
Briggs later played the videotape for his co-workers, who were awed at the clear images and contacted KSL TV. Walz, accompanied by a cameraman, came out to see the footage.
"They were amazed at the quality," said Briggs. He offered to patch the film directly into KSL's camera so it could be shown on TV, which his little semi-pro camera can do. But the KSL camera couldn't take the feed.
Wilda Tischner also called KSL TV. Tischner was buried in paperwork at the Utah County Assessor's Office in Provo when she glanced up at the window opposite her desk.
"I noticed how the clouds were divided, white and black clouds, with a definite demarcation and a little lump on the bottom of the black clouds," she said. "As I watched it, it began to expand and stretch down."
Quicker than you can say "I don't think we're in Kansas any more," she and three co-workers had the digital cameras they use for property appraisals pointed through the glass at the elongated cloud. They took turns using a telescopic lens to capture images.
Moments later, Tischner loaded the images into a computer and printed out copies of the photos.
"They were nearly as good as the ones on TV, though the ones they showed on TV were much larger," she said.
John Wang was in the midst of a photo shoot on the sixth floor of NuSkin International's office building in downtown Provo when the funnel cloud appeared. He grabbed a Kodak digital camera and managed to shoot one frame before the camera froze. He then switched to a standard camera.
Wang, a NuSkin photographer, downloaded the digital image on his computer and used a software program to adjust the color and contrast. He, too, then offered his digital print to local media.
KUTV Channel 2 used Wang's photograph on Tuesday night's newscast.
"This is actually the first time I've seen someone do something like this (provide a photograph on a computer disk)," said Bill Boss, meteorologist for KUTV.