No, Bob, it wasn’t a dust devil. It clearly was attached to clouds, with the classic tornadic funnel. It hit the ground for about 30 seconds, and the national weather service says it WAS a tornado.
We have strange things here in the desert. Flash floods, earthquakes and the little cousins of tornadoes...dust devils, but we DO get the occasional tornado. Youtube.com has quite a few photos of tornadoes going back several years, in various parts of the state.
We had a small thunderstorm about 3:00 a.m. I got up and let Jake in.