This is what you see when they form way too close to you. Jane and I got this view from our back porch…and when I talk about the ‘curtains’ or ‘skirts’ of a tornado going over the house, when those things decide to move, the speed is so great you can’t get from the back door to the front door before the ‘skirts’ pass over you…a view I had once too often, figuring as one of the reasons for moving north. I was getting the feeling I’d begun to run out of tornado luck when they kept forming over us and blowing past…
Somebody actually got a good shot of a supercell…
by CJ | Jun 10, 2013 | Journal | 23 comments
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I thought at first it was sped up, then i realized the lightning flashes were real time. Holy cats.
They are incredibly fast when they start to move, like a cat striking—only one that’s the size of a mountain… People get into trouble because they don’t realize how far they can come how fast. Most newsreel footage comes when a funnel has picked up enough debris to be visible, and then it’s moving usually very slowly.
If I had to venture a guess about what this cell could spawn, I’d say F3. Reasoning? Looks bigger than an F2 and the F4’s are much rarer…that’s pretty well when one of these just sits down on the ground and doesn’t stop or bounce much. Several times while we lived at Ski Island, one would form across the lake and dive across our house…and we watched that big F3 that looked a lot like this one spin up and dive not toward us, but northward, to do major damage in another town. My recollection is that that was the same day as the first of the F4-5’s to hit Moore, tracking clear up from Chickasha, out of a little area where a lot of bad ones form. The one that formed near us had a lot of northerly impetus or we could have been in a world of hurt.
It will send your pulse up a few notches, for sure.
Ummmm….I think I’ll take hurricanes over tornadoes. That is spectacular footage; I’m happy watching!
Link to the particular post rather than the home page: ‹http://thisiscolossal.com/2013/06/a-massive-rotating-supercell-filmed-near-booker-texas-by-mike-olbinski›.
And I’ll echo “chondrite”: That felt sped-up; if that’s real-time, I don’t want to be anywhere near a storm like that.
Is that “Scroll down a bit” link supposed to take me to your photos? Where I actually went is a blog site called “thisiscolossal.com”, with a page about “book paintings” by Ekaterina-somebody.
go further down….it’ll show you the pictures of the supercell, then there is another frame that has the actual film embedded.
When you consider that in looking at a cloud, you really have no perspective as to just how far away it is, because there are no referents in the sky to give you a feel for distance, it’s one of those things that can suddenly turn on you. Witness the tornado at El Reno, OK, and Tim was a professional. As an example, I was leaving Dayton, OH one afternoon, and driving north in I-75. I spotted a significant nimbo-cumulus cloud (thunderhead) in the distance to the north, and had no idea how far away it was until I got home, checked the National Weather Service radar, and found out that when I first spotted it, it was about 65 miles away. Without knowing at least two parameters, a known velocity (light, sound, etc) and time, you can’t compute the distance easily. I don’t have the necessary equipment.
In my avocation as a SKYWARN storm spotter for the National Weather Service, I try to attend as many training sessions as I can, especially the advanced classes, because in this way, I believe I’m doing the greatest service for the people of my county, as well as for the meteorologists at the NWS Station, Wilmington, OH. If I can give accurate, detailed reports of what I am seeing, that helps them immensely in making predictions, as well as in broadcasting alerts to the local TV, radio, and WeatherRadio outlets. Even a few minutes advanced warning is better than no warning. My car is equipped with a mobile amateur radio (ham) transceiver, with which I can not only transmit, but it is also programmed to override the radio if a National Weather Service alert is broadcast. It’s LOUD, it startles the heck out of me when it goes off, but I hear it. I have an advance weather station at my house, it reports on temperature, wind, wind gusts, barometric pressure, humidity, rainfall, rainfall-to-date, etc., and it’s connected to the Intarwebz to report directly to the National Weather Service and to the Automatic Position Reporting System (APRS) for dissemination to other places who might need or want that data. You can peek at it at http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/wxpage.cgi?call=KC6NLX-1 although it’s not as glamorous as the websites at the National Weather Service, you’re looking at raw data. What that data does then is feed the National Weather Service’s prediction models when combined with other data feeds.
As for storm spotting, I NEVER go out chasing storms, and I emphasize to the spotters in my county who report to me that I need them to stay in one place so they can report the conditions there. Many people don’t realize what they’re looking at when they see a supercell like the one in the link. The storm can hide a tornado in a rain shower (called a rain-wrapped tornado), and you’d never know it until it was on top of you and too late to run. Remember the scene in “Storm Chasers” where Reed Timmer’s crew almost got wiped out by a tornado? They were in a pickup truck, not an armored vehicle, and Timmer was an idiot for getting as close to the storm as he did. (I recall Season 1, Dr. Wormer saying that Timmer was a brilliant meteorologist, but he took too many chances with his crews’ lives.)
If you look at the base of that cloud, you’ll see where it is drawing more moisture up into it, primarily on the right hand side of the cloud’s base. That is the updraft area, that’s where tornadoes form, and are USUALLY rain-free areas, but not always. The updraft area is at the back of the storm, whereas that cool blast of air you feel at the front of the storm is the downdraft which is a result of the updraft cooling and dropping back to earth at the front of the storm. If you look at the top of a thunderstorm cloud, and the anvil top isn’t flat, but rather domed up as though someone dropped a few spoonsful of mashed potatoes on top, that storm has a significant updraft. That’s not to say it will form a tornado, but storms with significant updrafts have a higher percentage of tornado formation than those that do not. You can’t predict the strength of any tornado that forms, either, just by looking at the storm, that’s something we still haven’t figured out. If you want to observe a storm like that, the safest place to be, and the place that gives the best observation is to the right of the storm’s path, but be as far away as you can, without compromising your safety.
Smartcat, if you’ve been in enough hurricanes, you know they are notorious for generating tornadoes. So, you get the straight-line winds of the hurricane, and then suddenly, without warning, the circular winds of a tornado inside the hurricane. No, thanks, I’ll take the supercell, at least it’s short-lived when compared to a hurricane, and in my opinion, not as damaging. Hurricanes can generate lots of damage that a localized supercell doesn’t have the capability to create.
@Joe, I have seen hurricane spawned tornadoes. Back in the 80’s we had a category 2 storm spawned little tornadoes. It’s eerie, to say the least to see clusters of sixty ft oaks get snapped like matchsticks. After the storm we followed its path. It touched down every 300 ft. or so and could be tracked through the state forest. I think it’s what you’re used to. I’ve been around hurricanes since Carol in 1954. Nothing, so far, has matched that one for damage in this area.
Most people do not realize how fast these things can move. The one we watched form from our back porch did things that looked like speeded-up special effects. It began to spin, and it sucked the cloud sheet from over our heads, wrapping it all up like a skater’s skirt as it spun, and we were miles away from it. It still seemed to hang motionless except for the rotation, and then like a quarterback starting a run, like a thing with a brain and a goal, it launched into a northward sprint that ended in towns getting hit. It MAY be that we were seeing it as standing still because it was actually coming toward us (the object in your rearview mirror may be closer than you think)…and when it appeared to accelerate it was actually veering off down a river terrace…but whatever it was, it was F3 and we didn’t want them pancakes, no ‘m, we didn’t want ’em.
Re the El Reno situation, not all the roads around El Reno observe the grid pattern that is common throughout the state. It’s an old town, and there’s one road which, if you get on it, has no turnoffs for quite a while…as I recall getting stuck on it, with the town in view and no way to get there from here. I don’t know where the crew got hit, but the roads there could pose problems even with a GPS, and there’s also the chance that a new or temporary funnel formed right over them…when you’re under the base of the supercell, you are not guaranteed just one tornado. Tornadoes can exist pretty well invisible to the eye until they’ve touched down and sucked up dust. They are, after all, …just wind.
If you’re on the road and see the whole sky dark ahead, and cars pulling off and people getting out and staring—don’t keep driving. Pull off, turn on the radio and hunt for the weather report. Hail is often a precursor, and we’re talking hail the size of small cannonballs; or so thick you have to shovel it. Lightning can reach you from a supercell when you’re miles away under blue sky. And don’t shelter under an underpass. You become a cork in a bottle. Lie flat in a ditch, water and all, and do it BETWEEN the parked cars and the tornado so it won’t blow a car over on you.
Let’s not forget, pv=nRt, the ideal gas law. What you’re seeing in a cloud is not a solid massive object. In part, at least, it’s more like a pressure wave. In moving it can cause condensation at its leading edge and evaporation at the trailing edge; the “air” isn’t moving with the cloud. In a way it’s like a tsunami, the water molecules as it passes by in deep water travel in a circular path, not a linear one.
Off topic, but cool:
http://news.yahoo.com/iceman-mummy-suffered-head-blow-death-204028667.html
and even cooler
http://www.livescience.com/13151-otzi-reconstruction-iceman-mummy-copper-age.html
and for the geneology buffs,
http://www.livescience.com/24667-iceman-mummy-otzi-closest-relatives.html
I’m just learning to read the Y-DNA results, but so far, as per my paternal line, I am (among DNA results from famous people on the web) most closely related to Otzi the Iceman and Louis XIV.
I find it fascinating when they reconstruct a face from a skull. I can see the draw of archeology — to hold something human-made and wonder about the hands that crafted it and what their life was like and what they looked like and thought and felt. I’d like to know what really went on in those caves in France. The who and the why.
Yes, I prefer “ancient” history, pre-1600 or pre-Richelieu. But the War of the Roses? That was a family squabble–no, my family. The Lion in Winter? Gram-ma and gram-pa! (Not to mention “Le Dangereuse d’Ile de Borchard”, ooh-la-la!) Robin Hood? Gram-pa John! Norman Invasion? Family on both sides. Notable reign of Elizabeth I? In part due to gram-pa Wolsingham.
Puts a whole new light on history! Would that we knew when we were in school 🙁 (when they still taught History!). We’re gonna try to interest the younger generations now that we know. 😉
It is fun. I’ve investigated the little footnotes to a lot of lives connected to us…and some are quite amazing. Never knew great-great grandfather was murdered. Never knew how we got to Oklahoma AND Texas before they were states. Never knew how my father and mother met…and when you get to the remote stuff…it’s just mind-blowing.
Found out that the family penchant for shading the law (the Cole Younger connection) includes the new inlaws of a cousinly sort—seems their gran sheltered Bonnie and Clyde by hiding their car in their barn while the sheriff was out looking for them.
GOES-10 gives these IR images of the western US from Green Bay to the border of Texas & Louisiana on the Gulf, and all points west. Big red bulls-eyes are supercells.
http://www.goes.noaa.gov/GIFS/WCI8.JPG
Terrible beauty, like when the light is coppery green just before a hurricane. The most frightening thing about disasters to me is how aesthetically beautiful I find them.
There’s a phrase in one of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sonnets, “A yellow darkness, sinister of rain.” (The Harp-Weaver, Sonnet XVII) Oh, yes.
That’s the sort of formation I still see in nightmares. Growing up in the flattest part of West Texas (Odessa area) … yeah, we had these. Sometimes the storms were so amazing to watch, and I loved the lightning storms even as a little kid. But tornadoes are a different kind of amazing, the terrifying kind of awe-full. One leapt over our apartment building when I was a tot. We were spared, the building beside us was rendered into splinters. Not something you ever, ever forget. Or want to repeat!!
And yet they’re one of the most beautiful sky phenomenons I can think of; the things a cloud like that does to the light is nothing short of jaw dropping.
You mean we were neighbors at one point? Odessa is just down the road from me (Lubbock). My brother and his first wife lived down there for a while, too, in Midland.
It is beautifully awesome but part of me goes 1) “You freakin’ idiots! Now everyone will think its okay to stand on the ground and take pictures while Nature does Her thing!” and 2) I’d have liked to hear the “oh shit oh shit oh shit” commentary.
Incredibly beautiful and dangerous. The vastness and power of nature contrasted with what we tiny humans have built.
What a stunning site period! Wow! Now THAT’S photography!
And the supercell shots are the best I’ve ever seen. So beautifully, scarily awesome.