Winston Wells
EF1
I was happy to see Mike Marz's report from yesterday's remarkable cyclic tornadic supercell in far northeastern Nebraska, and I hope that other ST members who were on this storm will post their experiences as well. From my armchair chasing perspective last evening, this struck me as an extraordinary event. I believe that the storm was TOR-warned by either OAX or FSD from at least 8 p.m. to nearly 11:30 p.m., and in my ten years of chasing I cannot recall a cell whose radar signature displayed such strong, consistent circulation for so long. The magnitude of this storm was captured well by the SPC's tiny MCD #1048, which noted that rotational velocities on the storm suggested a "high probability...for a violent tornado based on radar alone." I don't think that I've seen such language before. As Mike mentioned in his report, the storm did have some similiarities to last year's Bennington, KS tornado, and some of the video of the bowl-shaped tornado with multiple vortices that occured just after dark reminded me a bit of El Reno's early phase. And on the ground, I simply cannot fathom what it must have been like to be a landowner in the area along a Coleridge-Laurel-Dixon line. Wow.
I don't think that we need another debate here about the meteorological rarity of such a storm, but I would enjoy hearing some views about why this particular cell behaved the way that it did. It appeared to be solidly rooted on the stationary front, and I'm sure that last evening's extreme CAPE values played a major role as well. But I'm less clear on why it wobbled only very, very slowly to the southeast over the course of the evening, and why the storm's mesocyclone persisted for as long as it did.
It probably goes without saying that Monday and Tuesday's events in northeastern NE will likely turn out to be the key events of the 2014 season. I certainly would have traded all of my previous trips this season for just one of these two days!
I don't think that we need another debate here about the meteorological rarity of such a storm, but I would enjoy hearing some views about why this particular cell behaved the way that it did. It appeared to be solidly rooted on the stationary front, and I'm sure that last evening's extreme CAPE values played a major role as well. But I'm less clear on why it wobbled only very, very slowly to the southeast over the course of the evening, and why the storm's mesocyclone persisted for as long as it did.
It probably goes without saying that Monday and Tuesday's events in northeastern NE will likely turn out to be the key events of the 2014 season. I certainly would have traded all of my previous trips this season for just one of these two days!
