9/25/05 REPORT: MS/AL

[Tony Cook]

My chase partner and I got a late start (~3:45CDT) out of West Huntsville, AL. Caught a rotating wall cloud with a couple of transient funnels just south of the city of Madison, AL. It persisted for less than ten minutes.

Caught two other cells with suspicious wall clouds over the next 3 hours. As the sun went down, the activity in N AL calmed down, with more discrete convection still occuring south of us near Birmingham.

Tuscaloosa County, AL was hit by several tornadoes. Some of the local media showed video of an impressive, strong-looking tornado. Seems to me that Tuscaloosa County, AL is the epicenter of tornadoes for our region over the last few years. We always joke that we should just head towards Tuscaloosa whenever there's a slight risk around here. Cuts out the headache of preparing a forecast.

TonyC

 

[Tony Cook]

ABC 33/40 in Birmingham caught one of the Tuscaloosa tornadoes with its tower cam. Pretty large tornado. There's a link to the video here:

http://www.chris-place.com/archives/2005/0...ado_on_the.html
(Warning- The WMV file is huge)

This is at least the second time they've caught a large tornado with their tower cam.

TonyC

 

[Andrew Khan]

If you don't want to watch/download the video, then here is a link to the pictures that a pedestrian captured. http://www.jamesspann.com/bmachine/post/wx...ornado-Pictures The last picture, looks to be a wedge...Although I am not sure, the intensity of this tornado.

 

[Tony Cook]

Here's yet another page with videos from the Tuscaloosa storms:

http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs.dl...WVUA01/50925006

These are also much smaller files than the tower cam vid.

TonyC

 

[Tony Cook]

And a new streaming link to the Towercam video so you don't have to wait for the whole thing to dl to watch it:

http://beta.abc3340.com/static/weather/vid...rnado092505.wmv

Absolutely amazing structure for a hurricane-spawned tornado.

TonyC

 

[j_scheerer]

Any F-rating on the yet?

 

[Andrew Khan]

I don't know, it was just yesterday. It looked like maybe a higher end F2, possible even a low end F3.

 

[Dave Gallaher]

Is an RFD slot visible in any of the views?

Dave Gallaher
Huntsville, AL

 

[Fred Gossage]

There was an unmistakable RFD slot in the towercam video that ABC 33/40 in BHM had yesterday for the Tuscaloosa County tornado. Still kinda hard to believe they caught the sucker live.....

 

[Todd Beal]

The MSU/Starkville, MS has been officially rated as F1

 

[Tony Cook]

Excerpt from the latest public info. statement from Birmingham about the Tuscaloosa county tornadoes...

AFTER EXTENSIVE AERIAL AND GROUND SURVEYS ACROSS WESTERN TUSCALOOSA
COUNTY...AT LEAST 8 SEPARATE TORNADO TRACKS WERE DISCOVERED.
PRELIMINARY DATA SUGGEST THAT 2 F1`S AND 6 F0`S OCCURRED. FURTHER
REVIEW OF SURVEY PHOTOS AND RADAR DATA IS ONGOING AND A LIST OF THE
TRACK LOCATIONS AND FINAL RATINGS WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE TUESDAY
MORNING. AT THIS TIME...ONLY TWO INJURIES WERE REPORTED WITH THE
TORNADOES IN TUSCALOOSA COUNTY. ..

8 separate reports now. I am surprised the Towercam tornado only did F1 damage. It looked like a monster. I believe it traversed mainly unpopulated areas, with the exception of Lake Lurleen.

TonyC

 

[Andrew Khan]

Wow, Really? Geez, it looked like something much greater than an F1. I am surprised about this, Like I said, I thought it would have been a higher end F2. It was pretty wide, and looked pretty powerful.

 

[Brett Adair]

The problem with this tornado was that it wasn't rotating rapidly at the SFC. The highest winds were indicated just above the SFC by radar estimates and VWP's. A mesoscale boundary setup just west of downtown Tuscaloosa, AL and made for a rocky afternoon Satruday as supercell after supercell rode across it. I have a few pictures here that are of the torando taken by the ABC33/40 towercam. This tornado was some 18 miles away from that towercam site.







I also have a few shots from my Spectrum Width and Storm Relative Velocity from my LIVE Level II radar. In this shot of spectrum width, the tornado is idicated and is currently on the ground right between these two intense spikes NW of Coker.



Also, the couplet is currently maxed out, outbound and inbound.

 

[Jason Toft]

This is a perfect example of why the size of a tornado cannot become equal to an F-rating, like we were discussing several months ago.

Jason

 

[Dave Gallaher]

Are there many known cases of F-4 and above tornadoes spawned by hurricanes? In my few experiences with them, it seems that large visible funnels are not unusual, but F-0/F-1 damage reports are the most common.

I accidentally drove under a wall cloud late at night during Hurricane Danny's trip through South Carolina that caused one or two fatalities a few miles further north. The structure visible due to elevated billboard lighting in North Augusta, SC, was formidable.

Dave Gallaher
Huntsville, AL