Bret Hendrickson
EF0
That footage reminds me of the Andover footage from '91. I can't believe the number of horizontal vortices sprawling out from the tornado!
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Michael Riedl
EF2
rdale
EF5
No, it has spun 127 tornado reports. You can see just at a quick glance that some are the same tornado being reported many many times. No matter how many LSRs come in, it's still 1 tornado.
Elinor McLennon
Amazing video. The sound was incredible. You could hear that guy panting with fear. He was so close to that monster. Thanks for the link. I was going to ask how close he was to it but as soon as he drove through that parking lot and I saw the damage across the street I had my answer.
Elinor McLennon
At first i was puzzled about what i was looking at. I have never seen so many horizontal vortices. That was mind blowing. Like everyone else I can't imagine what daylight will bring.
Chip Redmond
EF4
If I had a dollar for everytime this had to be said today...
TWC just aired an amazing video of a tornado (I don't know which one) developing from a extemely close vantage point and tearing apart trees and powerlines as it crossed the road. Reminded me of the tight small tornado video from Europe a while back. I can't find a link to it anywhere, can anyone find it?
I find it interesting the media was claiming the frontal boundary to be a dryline and not a cold front, which it obviously was.
ABC33/40 did by far one the most amazing jobs I have ever seen broadcast meterologists do with an outbreak. They kept their cool, knew the area, and understood the importance of the situation, making it as dumbed down as the public needed.
Chip
PDailey
The footage also reminds me of the '66 Topeka tornado. It also brings to mind the witness accounts of the Ruskin Heights tornado.
Jason Harris
EF5
What exactly causes horizontal vortices like that? Reminds me of Dr. Octopus. 
Chip Redmond
EF4
What exactly causes horizontal vortices like that? Reminds me of Dr. Octopus.
Real simple, speed shear at different levels. Say, 50kts going south at 100m and 50kts in the same direction 90m that contains enough moisture to condense.
Chip
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Jeff Snyder
EF5
What exactly causes horizontal vortices like that? Reminds me of Dr. Octopus.
If I had to guess, I would say that it's extreme stretching of horizontal vorticity. Typically, when we think of mesocyclones, we think of the tilting of environmental horizontal vorticity (caused by the vertical shear of the horizontal wind) and subsequent stretching of this newly-converted vertical vorticity (the dw/dZ or dB/dZ term). In this case, I can only think that the low-level / near-surface horizontal vorticity (or vertical wind shear near the surface) is so extremely strong that it ends up getting stretched INWARD towards the tornado as a result of extreme horizontal (radial or tangential) inflow. In other words, imagine taking a roll of dough, grabbing one end of the roll, and pulling it outward. In this case, there may be natural "rolls" (perhaps something like a vortex sheet aligned horizontally, with occasional "roll-ups"), and the horizontal acceleration of the wind associated with the tornado is so intense that the vortex tube, of sorts, gets stretched enough to drop the pressure low enough to produce condensation (the tubes that you can see). Actually, like vertical stretching, we are really talking about the gradient in horizontal wind resulting in horizontal stretching. Of course, vertical motion associated with the tornado can then tilt this already-condensed tube upward, resulting in these spiral-tube formations. Again, just my hypothesis.
Jason Harris
EF5
Thanks! (weather channel interviewing Chris England again for his video)
PDailey
Looks like poor Smithfield was hit again by a killer twister.
Will Campbell
EF2
Is this the video you are referencing Chip?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NdQPpiFDlA
I thought for so long that this had to be a faked video! Pretty insane (and tiny)
J Trueblood
EF0
I wonder...when someone gets footage like this, do they just put the camera away and stop chasing forever? I mean, I feel like there's nothing more to see after seeing this..Absolutely amazing.
Jeff Snyder
EF5
I'd also be surprised if the total count ends up near the Super Outbreak count. There were a lot of tornadic supercells today, but they primarily occurred over a relatively small area (by comparison to the Super Outbreak); for the most part, most of the tornado reports are from far eastern MS, the northern 2/3 of AL, and adjacent parts of southern TN and northwestern GA (though we can't ignore the other cluster of reports farther northeast). From a pure "totals" standpoint, many of these tornadoes apparently were long-lived, so you'd have 1 tornado per hour compared to maybe 2 or 3 from one supercell. If I remember correctly, we had close to 63 tornadoes in Oklahoma on 5/3/99, and I'm curious to see how many occurred today in AL.
Folks (myself included, I suppose) were surprised we didn't see much in the way of violent tornadoes during the last multi-day outbreak (April 14-15, IIRC). Judging from the radar presentations (which usually is a bad idea), the video collected, and the trickling-in reports, I think we had our fair share of violent tors today.
Folks (myself included, I suppose) were surprised we didn't see much in the way of violent tornadoes during the last multi-day outbreak (April 14-15, IIRC). Judging from the radar presentations (which usually is a bad idea), the video collected, and the trickling-in reports, I think we had our fair share of violent tors today.
