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This may not be Kansas, but witnesses say a tornado strong enough to lift a 500-pound snowmachine trailer high enough to punch a hole in the wing of a plane struck close to the Kenai Municipal Airport on Monday.

"It just popped out of the trees to the north of the lot, landed on the trailer with some aircraft floats tied to it, picked it up, slid it upside down on the wing of an aircraft, let go of it and let it fall to the ground," said Russ Winger, owner of Aero Maintenance in Kenai.

The floats and the trailer they were attached to belonged to Henry Novak, who said the total weight of the floats and trailer combined was probably more than 600 pounds. The twister dragged the trailer a few feet, lifted it up and dropped it on the wing of Kenai police officer Mitch Langseth's plane parked about five feet away. The twister set the trailer down not far from where it was picked up and moved toward two other Cessnas parked at Winger's lot.

"(The owners) just added weight to the airplanes to keep them from going over," Winger said. "(The twister) headed southwest."

Jim Roza, a Nikiski resident, drove straight into a twister close to Moose Lodge north of the airport. And more witnesses say a tornado is responsible for the damage sustained to two signs outside of Katina's Greek and Italian Restaurant at approximately 1 p.m. on Monday.

"(I said) 'Boy if I didn't know any better that sure looks like a tornado to me starting out,'" Roza said, adding that he recognized the funnel-shape from growing up in Michigan. "There was a lot of grass all over the place off the road. I'd just seen it picking it up and twisting. I could tell it was starting to build up."

The twister may have looked like a tornado, but Jim Nelson, the science officer at the National Weather Service forecast office in Anchorage, said folks could have seen an exceptionally strong dust devil or williwaw. Williwaws create a funnel effect in mountainous areas and fjords, often appearing as whirlwinds.

"I saw a video of a williwaw once and it ripped a boat off of someone's vehicle," Nelson said. "It just ripped it off."

Nelson had never heard the term williwaw before he came to Alaska, he said, but he'd heard of dust devils. Dust devils are caused by differential winds, a gust of wind coming from one direction and another gust going in an opposite direction creating a funnel. Funnels can appear above fires ? called fire whirls ? as waterspouts and as dust devils, and they can get big. If there's an actual cloud above the funnel, Nelson said the resulting updraft can make the dust devil stronger with winds reaching speeds of 60 or 70 miles per hour.

"It's a pretty neat phenomenon," Nelson said.

If there's a developing cloud overhead and the funnel has picked up a lot of debris or water, it can look a lot like a tornado because it'll attach to the cloud.

"You're not going to see it unless there's dust or debris," he said.

Winger called the twister a williwaw and said he's seen them about six times. Once, when he lived in King Salmon, a williwaw picked Winger up off the dock and threw him into the river.

"I've seen them destroy a camp," he said. "It's just a miniature tornado."

Normally tornados are the offspring of thunderstorms, but there were no thunderclouds passing through the area. Winger said it was sunny and not very windy. It was pretty normal for this time of year, he said; nothing to suggest that a twister would rip its way through his lot.

"You see them all the time," Winger said. "I guess you don't notice them much if they don't do any damage."

Jessica Cejnar can be reached at jessica.cejnar@peninsulaclarion.com.