2014-6-16 MISC: NE/IA/IL/WI/MN

[Jeff Hawkins]

The Pilger, NE twin tornadoes seem to have been viewed/videoed by several chasers. Doing a brief scan of YouTube, I found this video posted by the basehunters team: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jse6ZwP1g1g . I sincerely wish I could have been chasing there today too, but work obligations overrode my chasing desires this time around. That twin tornado event seems to be the "event of the year". Congrats to all who were able to be there today, and prayers for the town of Pilger and surrounding areas that were affected.

 

[Mike Marz]

If you weren't chasing in this area or weren't able to get off work today, like me, than I wonder if you are as completely devastated as I am. Obviously first thoughts go to all who were impacted by the tornadoes. That being said, meteorologicaly, this is clearly once in a lifetime. If you love storm chasing or weather and were able to witness this first hand, congratulations. Still can't wrap my mind around two seperate, cyclonic, likely EF4+ tornadoes, that close to each other... This is a series of texts I sent my chase partner 6am this morning. Still can't believe I missed this. Again, thoughts to all impacted, best wishes.

 

[Marcus Diaz]

Agreed on that being a once in a lifetime event. What amazed me is how quickly the storm evaporated from radar once it crossed into Iowa. Likely hit that stable air from the precip ahead of it. But watching all the clips of today makes me believe this storm will be studied thoroughly to see what crazy mesoscale phenomenons happened. All the joking I say about a day so good, that I expect "wedges with satellite wedges"...and this was clearly one of those days.

 

[Jake Orosi]

The Pilger, NE twin tornadoes seem to have been viewed/videoed by several chasers. Doing a brief scan of YouTube, I found this video posted by the basehunters team: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jse6ZwP1g1g .

At the risk of sounding all cantankerous, has "debris-envelope punching" become the new "core punching"? After observing in apparent horror that a town is being destroyed, he seems to decide that...driving directly into the wedge is the only way to defeat the tornado or something? I don't know. I'm just very happy we're not mourning the loss of another storm chaser.

But I don't want to be all negative. The closest I was able to get to this was TWC, but even their low-def live stream made a great impression. I'm very interested in the physics behind this event. These two tornadoes were both cyclonic and did not appear to be satellites in the obvious sense, forming quite far apart with the western(?) tornado eventually moving toward the eastern-most funnel before dissipating. There's also some confusion - I recall seeing some other video of a wedge tornado with a smaller satellite that came shortly after the "big twins" event; I'm not sure if the smaller satellite was what became of the second wedge, or whether it formed coincidentally off of the remaining wedge after the second had already dissipated. Hopefully more video will emerge that captures the entire lifetime of these tornadoes.

At one point, I thought I saw Cantore tweet that Doppler was showing three areas of tight circulation in that storm for a small period of time. I wonder if any of us happened to screenshot some velocity and reflective data over time, it could be very compelling stuff to study.

 

[Ryan Pfeifer]

I traded my Saturday shift to Monday so I could chase Saturday... but really I'm not sure I would have chased anyways since the USA world cup game was going on and chasing is always such a roll of the dice. Certainly wasn't any way to know THAT was going to happen. Which seems pretty well illustrated by how quickly it died off. But man, those videos of them both going seem downright other-worldly.

I'm also wondering how the basehunters team felt comfortable getting so close. I feel like if there were 2 raging tornadoes going on I'd be afraid of a 3rd dropping down or rapid widening or general other craziness occurring.

As far as for 3 velocity couplets, a screen cap was posted in the forecast thread: http://www.perezmedia.net/misc/stormtrack/20140616/2014061601_Radar.PNG

 

[Bob Schafer]

...if there were 2 raging tornadoes going on I'd be afraid of a 3rd dropping down or rapid widening or general other craziness occurring.

As far as for 3 velocity couplets, a screen cap was posted in the forecast thread: http://www.perezmedia.net/misc/stormtrack/20140616/2014061601_Radar.PNG

At one point I was filming the twins from S of Pilger, the first being on the W side of 15 and the second off to my right. A van that was parked behind me did a U-turn and drove south, making me think "Uh-oh, what's happening? Are we going to get a THIRD tornado? How many can we get here??" I then looked straight up and, sure enough, there was some rapid swirling right above me so I, too, did a U-turn and went S about a half mile to get out of the bear's cage.

That radar image is from several miles NE of Pilger, by which time I'm pretty sure there was only one torna---nope, scratch that.

Large debris went off to the horizon NE of Pilger, scattered about the countryside.

 

[Marcus Diaz]

I think it was the Basehunter's video around the 50 second mark where you see a vehicle cart wheeling along the ground at a very very fast pace. I've seen several racing accidents where cars tumble like that but never have I seen one go that fast. Easily that vehicle was tossed by winds well over 200 mph, since that's about as fast as most cars can go.

 

[brentford]

I know it wasn't exactly the same but the storm reminded me of the Greensburg supercell at times with several intense circulations within the overall storm.

 

[joel ewing]

Hi all. I'm sitting in the Dunes Motel in Albion, Nebraska right now, sicker than hell. Did manage to chase this setup, the initial very-low level rotation began directly over my and my chase partner Doren Berge's head as we sat in our vehicle just south of Norfolk, Nebraska...and directly north of the big Ford dealership on the hill on Hwy 81 north of Madison, Nebr. I was the first to call it into Norfolk's 911, where the operator seemed shocked that I was doing so and seemed to grill me a little more than normal. I told her verbatim that "this is going to be a BIG ONE" and that they better sound the sirens NOW. Don't know if they did or not...we tacked east into the jungles where we lost vision of the big cone temporarily. So sad to hear that 2 have died so far, but not surprised. More to come once I get home friday and kick this wicked cold/gunge and rest up. Sometimes ALL the hard work and millions of miles of driving do come together, and you get to witness something worthy of a lifetime. Yesterday with those 2 wedges side by side with a 3rd small vortex in the middle of them (yes, Doren will soon post pics), it was an day beyond imagination. Congrats to all that bagged.

 

[Jeff House]

Joel, sounds like a little survivor's guilt. It is normal, but don't beat up yourself. Obviously you did all you could. Ball was in 911's court. TV Mets I know go through some hard core survivor's guilt; again, they do their best and can't beat up themselves. You can bring a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. You can scream take shelter at the top of your lungs, and include live video of a violent tornado to infer personal impact, but you can't control other people. Only you know what is best now. Maybe you need a rest day. Perhaps you are ready to chase again. Personally, I'd try to get one more chase in before going home. A good structure or small/brief tornado day with no human impacts might be just what you need. Safe travels home.

 

[Rob H]

I think 911 operators were overwhelmed that day. I called in a tornado maybe half an hour after the "twins" and the operator simply hung up on me without saying "bye" or "thanks" or anything. Seemed kind of rude, but as long as they got my message and were able to act on it, that's what is important.

 

[Jeff Duda]

..driving directly into the wedge..

That was NOT a wedge tornado. Hell, the visible condensation funnel was barely wider than the road! Even above the ground the funnel was not that much wider, and still not even close to being a "wedge".

There seems to be some confusion among members of this forum regarding this event. People are acting like it's never been seen before or that it's some sort of manifestation from aliens. The meteorology behind this is fairly well known. This was a high-end cyclic supercell with such a configuration that the separate mesocyclones happened to be producing strong tornadoes in visual proximity to each other simultaneously. It also happened to occur in an area that is very wide open for chasing, with a good road network, and with a ton of chasers around it, so it was very well documented. The following references provide a good read on why this happens:
Adlerman et al. (1999)
Adlerman and Droegemeier (2002)
Adlerman and Droegemeier (2005)
French et al. (2008)
I would agree that an event like this is fairly rare, but it is far from unheard of, unprecedented, or "once in a lifetime". Maybe personally witnessing it with one's own eyes, but meteorologically, this has occurred before in recent past and will occur again, probably within 5-10 years (a slight adjustment from my 3-6 year estimate on another thread).

 

[Rob H]

That was NOT a wedge tornado.

I made a graphic that I hope people find helpful:

 

[John Hudson]

I made a graphic that I hope people find helpful:

That should clear things up, I believe. I personally wasn't trying to portray this event as anything other than what it was, but it is still utterly fascinating.

So perhaps this storm could be referred to as "duelling stovepipes"?

My heart goes out to all those affected by these storms. Will be interesting to see results of the damage survey, but it really looks like a high-end EF4 from the photos I've seen.

By the way Jeff, thanks for the doc links.

John
VE4 JTH

 

[Jeff Duda]

So perhaps this storm could be referred to as "duelling stovepipes"?

but it really looks like a high-end EF4 from the photos I've seen.

There seems to be some sort of machismo movement in chasing the last several years in which people have to claim superior status for having seen bigger tornadoes. Almost every strong tornado that occurs and is documented is now called a "wedge" even when it doesn't meet the definition (thanks, Rob, for making an idiot's guide to wedge tornadoes). Apparently a wedge tornado is at the top of the chasers leaderboard of achievements and is given priority over all other aspects of chasing, including seeing structure, strong tornadoes, multiple vortex tornadoes, or multiple mesocyclonic tornadoes. I personally do not get the same high out of seeing particularly wide tornadoes, mostly because I know that not every wedge tornado is strong/violent. Likewise not every strong/violent tornado is a wedge. A tornado's shape is actually a function of multiple factors including the RH of the parcels entering the funnel, the direction of larger-scale flow (like RFD/outflow pushing the tornado), as well as the actual pressure drop within the funnel (an actual indication of strength). As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter what their "technical shape designation" is (I'm going to start the patent application for the term with abbreviation TSD after finishing this post ), the tornadoes were visually opaque and had very rapid rotation; they were most likely "significant" tornadoes by SPC standards. They were solid, legitimate tornadoes that anyone who saw should be very happy about and proud to post pictures of for their career albums.

As you said, John, I would not be surprised to see the tornado that hit Pilger get an EF3 or EF4 rating.