2013-05-31 EVENT: KS, OK, MO, IL

[Bob Schafer]

(Fellow ST member) Jody Radzik sent me this link of a radar-loop gif: http://wdssii.nssl.noaa.gov/web/wdss2/products/radar/NWRT_20130531_ElReno.gif

That, I think, is very very interesting. Sorry if someone posted that link previously and I missed it. As Jody says, that right there explains what happened to our guys.

 

[Timothy Schaffer]

You're right, Reed, that is when the rapid expansion appeared to be taking place, coinciding with the sharp northward turn. One moment I had the whole tornado in the frame, I walk away from the camera for 30 seconds, and I come back to see that the tornado has exceeded the entire frame by a large margin. I've never seen a tornado expand that fast.

I thought it considerably exceeded the frame as well, but wasn't positive so wanted to err on the conservative side. It's just so large it is hard to wrap your head around it when viewing; and I'm just watching through you guys. I can't imagine witnessing it first hand. I assume it took many precious seconds to figure out just what was happening. It reminds me of some of the first hand accounts of the tri-state tornado. ..just a huge mass filling the horizon that was difficult to discern as a tornado until it was too late.
Reed

 

[Caleb Chevalier]

There probably won't be very many actual photos and videos of the 2+ mile-wide wedge, because it got wrapped in rain fairly quickly, but Mr. Nelson's video has a great look at how the whole meso dropped to the ground. Scary.

 

[Eric Matthews]

Our group talked that morning about the potential for an extreme environment, multiple tornadoes, multiple vorticies, and the potential for tornadoes to move non-traditional directions, including left turns. Given the setup for the day, I can't imagine anyone was too surprised when this started happening.

It is not uncommon at all for the very large and violent tornadoes to make strong left turns, but that is when they are beginning to occlude. As they make their strong left turns, they always drastically weaken in rapid fashion (i.e. Greensburg).

A few weeks ago, we had another hard left turner that seemed to brake the mould; Granberry, TX. As it made it's left turn, it ramped up and spread out.

Now, the El Reno one took it a step or two further...

Am I missing a history lesson where tornadoes make hard left turns then not quickly occlude?

 

[Gregory Kaeser]

If you are interested:
Here, I have a video, what Mark and I did South of El Reno on May 31.
We were North / Northeast of the Tornado and could shoot the first 10 minutes of the Development.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lac9n-Wn674

On our side, there are still more Pictures and Information - http://www.westwind.ch/usa13/20130531/20130531.html


PS: sorry, my English is not so good (I'm talking usually Swiss German)

 

[Elaine Spencer]

old people in Ok used to say "You dig a storm cellar now or you dig a grave later on."

I had the same thought recently. If you can dig six feet down to bury people, you should be able to dig some kind of storm shelter -- the only place I can think of where even that would be impossible would be New Orleans, where they do have to bury people above ground.

That said, don't confuse a "storm cellar" with a basement. Just because soil conditions make it difficult to dig a hole directly under your home doesn't mean you can't dig the hole a few feet away. Old-time storm cellars were usually built just like that, and could also double as "root cellars" for storing produce in the days before reliable refrigeration.

Didn't mean to get off topic but I think it would be helpful for people to realize that "basement" and "storm shelter" are not synonymous.

 

[David Hoadley]

I haven't seen any but one report of large hail near the El Reno tornado (the photo of a large stone in a hand), while south of I-40. Did anyone encounter the softballs that were forecast? If not, why not? For a storm of this intensity and size --60,000 high, I don't understand why it wasn't dropping baseballs all over the place.

I have to send my PC in for service, so will read the responses when I again have it. Thanks.

 

[STexan]

Right at I-40 and rt 66, I got hit by something pretty big. The wind, rain, and smaller hail was literally so immense you couldn't see to the point you knew what you were looking at more that about 10 feet but something put a large dent in the left front fender right at the wheel well opening. I would estimate a few of those were in the neighborhood of base ball, maybe bigger, driven at very high horizontal speed; but the larger hail was mixed in lightly with a lot of smaller (nickle to quarter?) size hail. I did see a pic on one thread here that looked to be about softball size and I think it was noted along or north of 40 near el reno IIRC

 

[Jeff Piotrowski]

David we encounterd one Baseball or Softball hail stone hit the suv NE of the Reno airport that was it.

 

[Dan Robinson]

I encountered large amounts of 1 and 2 inch hailstones driven sideways in the RFD on the southeast side of the tornado. I observed at least one baseball-sized stone falling in this area. My location at the time was just east of the NW10th/Reuter Road and Evans Road intersection, about 3 miles east of Highway 81.

 

[Jason McKittrick]

Like Dan, we observed some 1 to 2 inch stones in the RFD. Otherwise not much of anything larger than nickles.

 

[Jeff Wright]

Still awaiting the full report but at what point does the definition of "tornado" need to be updated?

The 2011 Tuscaloosa tornado, as it passed north of Downtown Birmingham was fairly wide, but I have heard the words "mesocyclone on the ground" used to describe the 1998 Nashville tornado, which followed our Oak Grove-Birmingham twister.

The elephant trunk/rope from Wizard of Oz makes people forget that the tornado is not just the condensation funnel. The twiser is wider than that. The inflow at your back in some ways can be described as part of the tornado, even if it isn't a true inflow jet. I remember drawings of tornadoes with a kink at ground level that depicted the jet.

That was what destroyed the Goshen Methodist Church in Alabama circa 1994.

Now in terms of records, I seem to remember in the late 1960s very early 1970s that Grazulis described (in his huge tome) a three mile wide F-3 that pushed a 1/4 mile haboob or something in front of it. This was around the time of the big Sunray tornadoes in his book. The big Wyoming tornado tornado, and the one in the mid 1980s (Moshannon state forest was it?) come to mind.

In Tornado video classics, the Coulton event was the widest I had seen that still looked a single funnel.

The very wide distance of the vortices--maybe deserving of being called separate tornadoes--is what caught people--were I to hazard a guess. That and the odd track.

I'm very glad there were few if any chasers around the 1980 Grand Island event--that would have fooled some folks as well from the look of its track.

The El reno radar loop seemed to show the storm absorbing a vortex into itself. Now with Hurricanes you have this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujiwhara_effect

Now I don't have anything like the training you guys have, but I understand that a mesolow is not the same as a mesolow, but I often wonder about broader circulations that may not be easily spotted that can assert themselves in ways not suspected.

Wasn't there a tropical system some years back where--even after the storm itself died--some circulation remnant went all around the Atlantic, only to become another tropical system? I once even saw a shear lock on a local TV station's radar once. (Not the chaff blob that had Huntsville radar folks stumped a few days ago)

I hope a lot of work goes into this event...

 

[Shawn Schuman]

Yeah, the F4 that tore through Moshannon State Forest on 5/31/85 was approx. 2.2 miles wide. The Scotland County, NC tornado on 3/28/84 was said to be at least 2 miles. I'm not sure which tornado you're talking about, but it may be the Gruver, TX tornado in 1971 (average width of a little over a mile I believe). The 1947 Woodward tornado may have been up there as well. I think there was a tornado in the late 1920s in Oklahoma (or possibly Texas) that was said to have a path width of 7 miles, but I'd imagine much of that was probably downburst related. There was also a tornado in Alabama during the Enigma Outbreak that was measured at ~3 miles, but again it's hard to say whether a lot of that was downbursts. And of course the previously-mentioned 5/3/99 Mulhall, OK tornado is intriguing as well.

 

[Bob Schafer]

Wasn't there a tropical system some years back where--even after the storm itself died--some circulation remnant went all around the Atlantic, only to become another tropical system?

I believe you're thinking of Ivan in 2004. I'm sure there are better links I could have provided, but this is a start:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tracks/tracks-at-2004.png

 

[MClarkson]

Ivan got in a bit of a laugh with that... I remember that chase... usually after you drive home, tired and smelly, the hurricane chase is over! Little did I realize that I would be considering chasing the same storm, again, in the same spot, days later after it took a meandering joyride across half the Atlantic. As it turned out, its second landfall was not worth chasing... but the fact it was back at all was amazing.

Bottom line... never say never! The chaotic behaviour of fluids will surprise us all sooner or later.