ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Over the weekend, a funnel cloud was spotted up in the Jemez Mountains, and one man even got it on video.

There wasn’t a whole lot of damage left over from Saturday’s storm. But folks in the area were still talking about how they couldn’t believe a tornado had formed all the way up there in the mountains.

“We were preparing the campsite for people to come. So we had to figure out what to do, and in our particular case that was to go to the bathrooms. It’s the most secure place, it’s made of brick only two windows,” said Tony Rainwater, a campground host at Jemez Falls.

Rainwater and his family are the campground hosts at the Jerez Falls Campground. The family took shelter immediately because this was a situation they had never been in before.

“I was raised to believe when a tornado comes across a mountain, it just breaks down,” said Tony. 

Over at the National Weather Service’s Albuquerque office, forecasters were also perplexed by what they were seeing. 

“We are sitting at an elevation of about 8,150 feet for this tornado, so that is a bit unusual. We don’t get that to happen very often,” said Scott Overpeck, a meteorologist of the National Weather Service ABQ. 

Unusual, but not impossible.

“I think the main thing is that we have to have the right atmospheric conditions. Usually, you might have enough conditions to get a storm, but not enough for that storm to rotate and produce a tornado. Those conditions don’t usually come together over mountains very often, they can as we know,” said Overpeck. 

Overpeck and his team ventured went up the mountain after the storm to try and gauge how strong it was. In the end, they ranked this tornado as an EF-Unknown, because it was hard to survey exactly where the tornado touched down.

“We found where we think the tornado was, there was some damage to trees, but sometimes it is hard to tell if it’s new damage or old damage. We couldn’t always access the area we wanted to get to, so it took a lot of driving around,” said Overpeck.  

Locals say they saw more damage from the hail rather than the funnel cloud.

“A few fallen tree branches, bunch or hail everywhere, but nothing significant,” said Tony. 

The National Weather Service says the best way you can be prepared for these unexpected storms is to make sure your phone receives weather alerts. Anyone can get those with the free KOB 4’s weather app.