4/11 Wall Cloud Makes Front Page

[Dave Gallaher]

News photog Michael Mercier from the Huntsville Times caught a nice shot of the wall cloud that passed across Meridianville (the storm I reported on in the NOW thread for that date) and it was featured on nearly the entire top half of the Huntsville Times on Saturday, April 12.

I saw the storm cross US 231 about twenty minutes after this view (I was driving in traffic and got some video, but not as nice as this). The wall cloud was still together and had more of a 'trunk' on the front end, leaning down into the precip core. This is very nice structure for this neck of the woods. The cell was not too large and went from unorganized to severe very quickly.

This was a nice thing to see enlarged on the front page--

I have attached this small image from al.com.

 

[Jim Saueressig]

Isn't that a small shelf cloud anyways? Or am I confused?

 

[Aaron Dooley]

Shelf Cloud...

I would agree on the shelf cloud. It appears that that cloud is jutting outward which would suggest outflow from the downdraft behind/inside it. Wall clouds are inflow based and slope towards the precip area. That looks like a outflow cooled feature.

-Dooley

 

[Dave Gallaher]

Video caps from 4/11/08 around the time of the tornado warning. Structure is not convincing...

Update on this cell: NWS Huntsville has posted a preliminary report of a 200-yard-wide EF-0 that tracked 3.8 miles with this cell. Damage was primarily uprooted trees and flipped irrigation pivot systems and would have occurred at the time of these vidcaps.