Tornado did hit West Seattle school, experts say
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It pulled a school supervisor out of her shoes and threw her 6 feet. It also tossed several children. Scientists now think the strong wind that disrupted an after-school program Monday on a playground in West Seattle was a tornado.
"... When you look at the evidence, there are no other explanations other than a small tornado," said Brad Colman of the National Weather Service.
After viewing video from KOMO TV's tower camera, Colman thinks the weather phenomenon that flung Donna Carreon and some children at the Cottage School at Gatewood Elementary School into the air was one of the few tornadoes Western Washington experiences each year.
"Seattle certainly has the possibility of some day, some time having a serious tornado. But this wasn't it," he said. The last major tornado in Western Washington touched down in Vancouver on April 5, 1972, and killed six people.
Colman was convinced by a rotating motion that showed up in the television footage.
He suspects it was caused by a combination of winds from the Puget Sound Convergence Zone - wind blowing inland from the ocean that is split by the Olympic mountain range and meets up, usually around the King-Snohomish county line - and the thunderclouds in the sky Monday.
Although Ted Buehner of the Weather Service said Tuesday that the phenomenon wasn't a tornado because of the lack of thunderstorms that are associated with them, Colman said the video as well as the accounts of witnesses override that belief.
"Ted didn't have as much information as I had," he said. "When you look at all the bits of information, it doesn't point to a tornado. But when you look at all of them together, it adds credibility that very possibly it was a very weak tornado."
University of Washington atmospheric-sciences professor Cliff Mass agrees.
"It was very, very small scale," he said. "But clearly, something really interesting happened here."
Gina Kim can be reached at 206-464-2761 or gkim@seattletimes.com