Tornadoes....

Tornadoes Rip Through U.S. South, Killing 50

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:55:00 +0000

February 6, 2008—A tornado touches down in Atkins, Arkansas, at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, February 5.

Overnight, scores of tornadoes tore through Arkansas, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Tennessee. As of 2:50 p.m. ET on February 6, at least 50 people had been killed, according to the Associated Press.

The powerful storms—which demolished warehouses, a college dormitory, and a shopping mall—may have been due to La Niña, the AP reported. This Pacific Ocean cooling is the opposite of the El Niño effect and has been known to alter weather systems far from the ocean.

HUGE MANITOBA TORNADO! June 23, 2007

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 05:14:00 +0000

Colorado Tornado Riverside Reservoir July 21 2000

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:20:00 +0000

Friday night, July 21st, about 4:50 pm. I noticed a cloud north of Greeley Colorado that appeared to have the potential for producing a tornado. Skeptical, I stopped at home, got on the internet and checked the Storm Prediction Center predictions, then I looked at radar, and decided that my visual observations were accurate.

Tornado Moberly Missouri July 4, 1995

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:02:00 +0000

Storms produced tornadoes over northeastern Kansas and northern Missouri on 4 July 1995. When 4th of July celebrations began that morning no one in Moberly expected a tornado would make this a day no one living there would be able to forget. Here are a few tornado photos and damage photos from some that were there on that day.

Funnel Cloud

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:10:00 +0000

Funnel cloud as seen from Broadstairs, October 2006.

Late Night Supercell Fun! - West of Kearney Nebraska

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:01:00 +0000

August 7, 2007 - This was 2007's best late night storm in south central Nebraska. All these images were taken about 1:45am. With the city lights helping with the bringing out the brightness of these images, and the severity of this storm, you can see one well defined shelf cloud, and 2 defined wall clouds. These were some of my best night images ever!

Thunderstorm North & West of Kearney Nebraska

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 08:57:00 +0000

06-06-2002 - There was a Tornado spotted 2 miles east of Kearney, and I was exactly 2 miles northeast of Kearney Nebraska. I didn't see any funnel but the winds were ferocious, and there was so much ground derbies flying everywhere. At times, you couldn't see in front of you.

Tornadic Supercell - Kearney Nebraska

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 08:50:00 +0000

09-06-2007 - Another late season Supercell, developed just to the west of Kearney Nebraska. This one did pack a wallop of a wind storm, and to the north of these shots, there was a Tornado spotted in Buffalo County. We had 3 different waves of storms that afternoon. Incredible clouds formations and 2 different wall clouds spotted within this set of images.

Tornado Watch

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 08:47:00 +0000

Tornado watches are issued when conditions are favourable for the development of severe thunderstorms with the potential to produce tornadoes, as was the case on Aug 4th in the Edmonton area.

INCREDIBLE TORNADO VIDEO!! May 4, 2007

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 05:27:00 +0000

TornadoVideos.net storm chasers Reed Timmer and Joel Taylor shot this INSANE video of a violent tornado from within 50 yards!!! We had to back up at the last second, and my cell phone fell out on ...

May 2008 tornado in Kansas and Oklahoma.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 05:19:00 +0000

May 2008 tornado video highlight clip from TornadoVideos.net and TVN Stream 1 in Kansas and Oklahoma. Check out "Storm Chasers" on Discovery Channel in October 2008 for even more extreme tornado footage in HD!

Tornado skips across Miami

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 06:02:00 +0000

A tornado moves through downtown Miami

Monday, May 12, 1997,

Atouching down on the southwest edge of the city.

AP Photo/The Miami Herald

The tornado swept past the station and Miami's high-rise condominiums, smashing windows and damaging roofs and cars in a two-mile path as people scrambled for cover. No one was killed and only five injured, including a woman who suffered a heart attack.
Several television stations captured spectacular footage of the twister's funnel cloud as it blew through downtown with 100 mph winds, then past condo towers and across causeways on Biscayne Bay.
"The radar indicated well-organized, persistent internal structure" within the storm, says Snow, indicating it might spawn a tornado. But tornadoes are infrequent in south Florida, a place better known for gusty thunderstorms and waterspouts.
An American Airlines jet flying into Miami International Airport hit severe turbulence because of the tornado, injuring two passengers and five flight attendants. The A300 from Boston had 156 passengers and nine crew members aboard. It landed safely.
Anna Varela, who lives on an island between Miami and Miami Beach, saw the twister on TV. Then she looked out a window and saw the tornado bearing down on her house, which escaped virtually unscathed.
"They showed it on TV and then it came through like a whirlpool," she said.
Source: The Associated Press

The Nuts and Bolts of a Whirlwind

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 05:54:00 +0000

1. A large, layered sandwich develops in the atmosphere. Hot, humid air is trapped beneath cold, dry air.
2. The "cap" (a layer of stable air between the hot and cold air) is disturbed by winds in the upper atmosphere or by the arrival of a weather front.
3. Lower-level air rises and expands in the reduced air pressure aloft.
4. As the air cools, moisture condenses, releasing latent heat which warms the air, making it buoyant, and causing it to rise at speeds up to 150 mph. By now, the cloud is a thunderstorm. Upper-level winds tilt the thunderhead, creating the anvil shape.
5. The thunderstorm may die out in intense rain and/or hail. Or it may spawn a tornado.
6. Interactions between air at various altitudes, humidities and temperatures cause rain, lightning, air circulation and strengthening of the rotating updraft, now called a "mesocyclone." Low-level wind helps cause this rotation, which is almost always counter-clockwise (seen from above) in the Northern Hemisphere.
7. A tornado may form below the mesocyclone. As the spinning air column narrows, it rotates faster and extends higher into the storm.

A wide angle 39 view dusty tornado

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 10:16:00 +0000

South Dakota Tornadoes of June 23rd, 2002

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 10:04:00 +0000

On the evening of June 23, 2002 a classic tornadic supercell thunderstorm developed over extreme northern South Dakota along the North Dakota / South Dakota state line in the vicinity of Ashley, ND and Long Lake, SD. The initial series of updrafts that evolved into this supercell began approx 10-15km north of a small-scale area of low pressure (meso-low) located at the intersection of an east/west oriented section of a quasi-stationary outflow boundary and an apparent north/south oriented surface trough that demarcated slightly drier air to the west from deeper/richer moist air to the east.

Close-up detail of non-mesocyclonic tornado

A wide angle view of big dusty tornado

Alfalfa 22 May 1981

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 09:41:00 +0000

22 May 1981, looking NNW. A "textbook" tornado extending from the wall cloud of a classic supercell, with a "clear slot" cutting through the cloud base around the near side of the wall cloud. The slot represents part of the occlusion downdraft, an arc of sinking air believed to contribute to tornado development in many cases. The tornado did damage rated at F2.

The Canadian, Texas storm

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 09:27:00 +0000

This tornado was the third of five occurring that afternoon to the southwest, west and north of Canadian. Fortunately this monster dissipated before reaching the city of Canadian.

Tornadoes strike across America

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 07:42:00 +0000

Powerful tornadoes have ripped through several states in America. There were 65 tornadoes in just one day.

Powerful tornadoes have killed at least 20 people in southern America.

One tornado wrecked a school in the state of Alabama, killing at least eight people and injuring about 40 as it ripped off the roof.
Rescuers are still searching for people trapped in the wreckage of the school in the small town of Enterprise.

Although Alabama had the worst storms, nine people were killed in Georgia. Both states are still on high alert as more tornadoes could hit the area.

Powerful tornados have ripped through several states in America, killing four people and damaging hundreds of homes.

The tornados swept through Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado and Nebraska in just one day as part of a really bad spring storm.
The town of Holly in Colorado was one of the most badly hit with roofs ripped off buildings and broken power lines and debris littering the streets.

Texas was also battered by heavy hail and rain during the storms.

Tornados, Flooding May Warn Of Climate Change

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:34:00 +0000

Jun. 4, 2008 — Record-keeping meteorologists at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration say this year’s tornado season is one of the deadliest in a decade and may be on pace to set a record for the most tornadoes. And flooding in the Midwest has been at 100-year levels this spring.

This year’s tornado season is one of the deadliest in a decade and may be on pace to set a record for the most tornadoes.

Scientists Unravel Midwest Tornado Formation

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:29:00 +0000

ScienceDaily (Apr. 12, 2005) — Although tornadoes are usually thought of as springtime storms that develop in early evenings out of isolated weather cells, storm watchers now say that conception often fails to hold, especially in the larger Midwest. Although far from the so-called "Tornado Alley," a region that falls generally in the southern plains of Texas, Okla. and Kan., the greater Midwest still experiences a large number of the storms each year.

Kansas, on June 24, 1909

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 06:36:00 +0000

A tornado near Norton, Kansas, on June 24, 1909.

From "Monthly Weather Review," July 1919, p. 448.

Tornadoes normally rotate in a cyclonic direction (counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere). Larger-scale storms always rotate cyclonically because of the Coriolis effect; however, tornadoes are too small in scale to be directly affected by the rotation of the earth. Approximately 1 tornado in 100 rotates in an anticyclonic direction. Typically, only landspouts and gustnados rotate anticyclonically. However, on very rare occasions, an anticyclonic supercell can develop, producing a tornado that is typical except for its direction of rotation.

Tornado, A Violently Rotating

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 06:30:00 +0000

A tornado is a violently rotating column of air which is in contact with both a cumulonimbus (or, in rare cases, cumulus) cloud base and the surface of the earth. Tornadoes can come in many shapes, but are typically in the form of a visible condensation funnel, with the narrow end touching the earth. Often, a cloud of debris encircles the lower portion of the funnel.Tornadoes can be the most destructive storms on earth. Most have winds of 110 mph (175 km/h) or less, are approximately 250 feet (75 meters) across, and travel a mile (1.6 km) or more before dissipating. However, some tornadoes can have winds of more than 300 mph (480 km/h), be more than a mile (1.6 km) across, and stay on the ground for dozens of miles (more than 100 kilometers).They have been observed on every continent except Antarctica; however, a significant percentage of the world's tornadoes occur in the United States. This is mostly due to the unique geography of the country, which allows the conditions which breed strong, long-lived storms to occur many times a year. Other areas which often experience tornadoes are south-central Canada, northwestern Europe, east-central South America, South Africa, and south-central Asia.

One of several tornadoes observed by the VORTEX-99 team on May 3, 1999, in central Oklahoma. Note the tube-like condensation funnel, attached to the rotating cloud base, surrounded by a translucent dust cloud.

Tornadoes in Love

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 06:00:00 +0000

This photo is really special. Tornado In Love.

Monstrous Double Tornadoes

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 05:55:00 +0000

In one of the most incredible tornado photographs ever taken, monstrous double tornadoes rip through Midway, Indiana, between Goshen and Elkhart on Palm Sunday, April 11, 1965, at 6:32pm. These two massive funnels were rotating around each other, and produced F4 damage.

Coming Tornado

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 05:28:00 +0000

A storm is coming.