01-28-06 Kansas First January Tornado: Links to some sites

Originally posted by Jeff Snyder
Bill,

I do think much of the public would say "out of nowhere" if it isn't rainy or overcast where they are. We all know that supercell tornadoes are associated with the updraft and thus often occur away from the precipitation core. If it's an isolated supercell, and the funnel is tilted, you could be hit by a tornado, look up, and see mostly blue (since the precip and clouds are downwind for your location). I usually don't put a whole lot of stock in public reports since I'm not sure how observant and objective they are when put in a stressful or exciting situation (i.e. reporting an event which most people never see -- a tornado).
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Yeah, I kind of jumped the gun and started making comments just made on the news clip hype befor Mike put out a radar image. They were pretty much stating no storm was around. In actuality after reading the NWS report above the radar link it wasn't really even a storm - just a small shower. This is really kind of an interesting event. It seems it is a "tornado" type event but associated with weak boundaries caused by a small localized nearby shower. It almost sound like virga type precip where the evaporation causes lots of nearby turbulance and rather than straight line wind damage the boundary outflow from this shower somehow produces a shear vortex which does some minor damage. Very interesting indeed it seems.

But yeah, I agree the public and the media would probably discount the nearby storm if the tube came out of the cloud and no precip and storm around them - at least to some degree. It seems however in this case that it wasn't much of a storm. Apparently it was just a small thin cloud that was just enough to drop some weak rain.

Too bad we don't have a picture or video of the cloud / vortex.
 
Originally posted by Glen Romine
As for Scott's report - agree there isn't clear photographic evidence it was a tornado in what he showed us, and there wasn't a report in the SPC log - but maybe we should wait for his full story before assuming it wasn't genuine.

Glen
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I agree. I made a clear point not to say he didn't see one - only pointed out I was unable to see from the photos. I elaborate more in the actual reports thread and provided some suggestions for him.

I should also point out I have lots of photos or even videos of torns that in person visually with my eyes I could definitely tell something was going on and there was interaction with the ground, but the photo / video evidence won't show it. A good example was at night last June 9th with David Douglas in the direction of Dickens and a known tornadic storm. We saw a weak landspout with clear lowering of cloud material but the vid cam / photos did a poor job of showing the detail. I may try and post and example.
 
Originally posted by Glen Romine

Thinking about this event reminds me of a storm I saw near Roswell, NM back in 1999, where the surface tornado contact was well seperated (by several miles) from the parent storm. Here are some pics:

My vid capture from the east looking west:
http://www.atmos.uiuc.edu/~romine/gallery/...ather/rosw1.gif

Thom Trimble's much more dramatic view of the same tornado from the southwest looking northeast:
http://tornado.sfsu.edu/geosciences/StormC...dissipation.JPG
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Nice shots. That second link which shows the long snakey rope reminds me a a tornado we had here in Cedar Park 3 or 4 years ago near my home. I was chasing it and it did damage to a subdivsion. I was unable to see where it made contact with the ground though due to hills / trees. But it was a seriously long snaking funnel / tornado that seemed to go on forever up into the cloud and back out with curved / bent areas - all mostly horizontal.

I know that most associate long narrow tornadoes as "rope stage" and decay stage for a tornado, but I'm not sure if that is always true. Seems sometimes that's how they start as well as how they end. They don't always become some full blow angle shaped vortex. In these cases they appear to be just be extensions of the circulations way up in the cloud. Of course that's what all tornadoes are, but they just seem like homogenous tubes throughout the length all the way up into the parent storm.
 
Radar and plotted location reports:





The times are about 10 minutes before report (second picture is same time as Mike posted from TOP.) I'd say landspout since we know there was moist convection and an updraft/convergence to stretch/tilt the existing environmental voriticty.

Thanks to www.Allisonhouse.com for the radar files!

-Scott Olson.
 
When I first saw that report after my chase, I started looking at radar and did not see something that would indicate a tornado. I'll agree with the landspout idea. That sort of makes me eager to see if there was damage with Scott's catch. Evidence supports a tornado could have occurred in that region, as the storm was discrete at that instant.

I forgot that January was the tornado-less month in KS.
 
There was a time when these "undetectable" tornadoes were rare, but it's been made obvious over the years that they really aren't. We saw one June 4 in Kansas. And then there was the freak tornado in SW Oklahoma back in October of 2000. These are but a few instances, and history has shown it's anything but unheard of for a doppler radar to miss a tornado.

IMO, the NWS needs to exercise less skepticism and start trusting the folks who call in. And while we're on the subject, if "spotter" is a word that, when attached to a report, draws skepticism, the NWS need only take a moment and realize they trained those spotters. Seems it's more about "wait until something bad happens then believe it" instead of "take the report and act on it and if nothing happens - that's good." Maybe people should stop reporting severe weather and start reporting damage.

I'm tired of the "crying wolf" argument; people don't pay attention 95% of the time anyway, and the ones who are wise enough to actually heed weather warnings won't be discouraged by a false report here and there.
 
I wasn't planning to chase Saturday, but local EMD was discussing the storms in Clay Co. when I got off the river from kayaking so I bit and went spotting for him.

I did see a very distinct funnel to the NW of Manhattan, but it was short-lived. Beyond that initial sighting, there were times where weak, low-level rotation could be seen on the backsides of a couple of the cells.

I won't doubt Scott's report from farther north of me, as there was certainly a stronger cell around the Marshall Co. line. Had I not been out there it would have been tough to believe, but this was not an average storm day.

As for the reports from farther south, it would not surprise me if there was a weak tornado associated with some of those cells, but the ones in Morris County seemed more potent than those further SW.
 
"IMO, the NWS needs to exercise less skepticism and start trusting the folks who call in."

Spoken from someone who has never been on that end of a spotter report phone ;>
 
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