Mysterious ‘tornado’ prompts sirens to be sounded in Footville, Janesville

JANESVILLE – Janesville and Footville were buzzing Tuesday afternoon about strange funnel cloud spottings.

According to police scanner traffic, the Footville Fire Department spotted a funnel cloud shortly after 1 p.m.

Then, at approximately 1:43 p.m., an officer reported on the scanner traffic seeing debris near the area of Highway 14 on the east side of Janesville resembling that resulting from a tornado touching down.

There had been no thunderstorms reported in the area, nor any watches or warnings.

There were reports on scanner traffic around 1:48 p.m. of a funnel cloud sighting on Highway A.

Concerns of a tornado first surfaced around 1 p.m. when, according to scanner traffic, there was a “funnel cloud in the northwest corner of the county.”

A representative at the Rock County 911 Communications Center said the tornado whistle did sound in the Footville area in an abundance of caution. The same representative said the siren did sound in Janesville at the time of the funnel cloud being spotted in that city out of caution.

“Multiple citizens are reporting seeing rotation in the sky (in Janesville) so that’s why we sounded the siren,” the representative said.

The National Weather Service didn’t issue warnings in either case because there was no concern of damage being done in either case, the representative said.