Amazing GA structure shot and prom goers chase down tornado

There were some pretty nasty, isolated storms across South Alabama and SW Georgia both Saturday and Sunday. They looked awesome on radar and had 1.75" and larger hail, some wind damage, and a few tornado reports. I was babysitting my granddaughter or I would have been after them.
 
Bill, that looks almost like an LP structure, doesn't it? We don't get many of those down this way, that's for sure, though NWS Huntsville has a photo of one in Tennessee a couple years back. But where would the dry air come from to sculpt the updraft like that in south Georgia? I'm with you--not totally convinced.
 
I'm with Dave and Bill on this one. I've lived in the Southeast for over 30 years, and I've yet to see that kind of structure down here. And Saturday the 26th the storms I saw were classic to HP.
 
It is unwise to "never say never" in the incredible world of meteorology, but that said,.....I think that Dr. Hark is on to something. The "never say never" is in reference to questioning the possibility of such incredible storm structure occurring in southwestern Georgia. The picture just does not look right.

According to reports from the NWS Forecast Office in Tallahasssee, FL., the tornado touched down around 7:22PM, E.D.T. I would question whether or not the amount of daylight in the online photo would equal the actual amount of daylight that would be present at 7:22PM in late March in southwestern Georgia.

LOCAL STORM REPORT From the NWS Tallahassee, FL.---

0722 PM TORNADO BENEVOLENCE 31.88N 84.74W
03/26/2011 RANDOLPH GA EMERGENCY MNGR

EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT/RANDOLPH SHERIFF DEPT. REPORT A
TORNADO TOUCHDOWN IN THE CITY OF BENEVOLENCE. DAMAGE
INCLUDES SEVERAL TREES AND POWERLINES DOWN...ONE MOBILE
HOME DESTROYED...ONE MOBILE HOME SEVERELY DAMAGED...AND
SEVERAL OUT BUILDINGS DESTROYED.


I also have to question the overall storm in relation to the photo's overall background. The cloud base does not look like it is proportional to the rest of the picture. It is almost as though the storm is on the ground in the field that is in the backdrop of the picture.

On another note, it is my current meteorological understanding that for such amazing supercell storm structure to occur, several meteorological parameters need to be present including, but not limited to, at least a moderate amount of surface-based convective available potential energy, and a decent amount of 0-1 KM storm relative helicity.
Did the metorological parameters that enable such storm structure to evolve exist across southern Georgia early in the evening of Saturday, 3-26-2011? Looking back at some data, there is a Mesoscale Discussion product issued by the Storm Prediction Center at 7:59PM, E.D.T. In that report, the graphics depict an area of decreasing mean layer CAPE from southeastern Alabama heading east towards Georgia, with mean layer CAPE values that are less than 1,000 j/kg as one heads east.
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/md/md0284.html

From the social side of things, what time did the prom start?

According to the article in Dr. Hark's post,.....
"CUTHBERT, GA (WTVM) - Teen viewers took pictures of an usual storm cloud Saturday night in Randolph County, during their high school prom. The National Weather Service confirms that a tornado touched down in the area. News Leader 9 obtained these photos from the mother of one of the teens.
She tells us that her son and his friend spotted the storm cloud behind their high school and chased it down to take photos."

I have my doubts.
 
Pretty funny how they called it an "unusual storm cloud." Probably just about everyone in the western and central parts of the plains states has seen something like that. lol Awesome shot for Georgia though.
 
Tom Tackett said:
From the social side of things, what time did the prom start?

According to the article in Dr. Hark's post,.....
"CUTHBERT, GA (WTVM) - Teen viewers took pictures of an usual storm cloud Saturday night in Randolph County, during their high school prom. The National Weather Service confirms that a tornado touched down in the area. News Leader 9 obtained these photos from the mother of one of the teens.
She tells us that her son and his friend spotted the storm cloud behind their high school and chased it down to take photos."

I have my doubts.
Click to expand...

It's always possible that the photo is legit, but the details are not adding up. According to a Google search, Randolph County, GA has one school district, with one high school, that being Randolph-Clay High. According to their school calendar for 2011, the annual prom is not until Saturday, May 7th. There also appears to be a private academy in the area, but there are no details about any prom on their official calendar. Something certainly seems amiss here.
 
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The photo does look suspicious - however I don't remember seeing it before. A Tineye search doesn't turn up anything. If it was a composite job, it was well-done. Would be interesting to hear if the station investigated it further or if the owner of the original turns up.
 
I tried using google maps satellite to find the school, and the football field in the foreground, however, a new school was recently built that doesn't show up on the old satellite image.

This is supposed video from the tornado near Cuthbert http://iwitness.weather.com/_tornado-footage-cuthbert-ga/video/1554002/148597.html The look nowhere near similar, though we all know storms can look completely different front a different angle. The video is more of what I would think a tornadic supercell in GA would look like.

However - there is another video of the Cuthbert tornado, and this would looks like it could lend some credence to the picture: http://iwitness.weather.com/_tornado-cuthbert-ga/video/1554054/148597.html?b=
 
The Southeast can occasionally get LP-like supercell structures...I was on a storm in North Carolina almost a couple of years ago (see report thread: http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/showthread.php?20606-5-6-09-REPORTS-NC&p=225923#post225923), and it had an LP structure to it with a small precip core and a visible, rotating wall cloud/updraft/meso. Unfortunately, the pics are pretty close to it so I wasn't able to get its full structure, but you kind of get the idea. It's rare, but it can happen.

What seems unusual to me about the story is the prom being held in March...all of the proms I went to were in early/mid May, right near the end of the school year. Perhaps that school is different than others?
 
The nagging feature to me is the unusually open, treeless horizon in the left background. While there are open fields in Dixie Alley, a long-distance-visibility horizon like that is rare in that part of the country.
 
Two things that stick out to me with this link http://www.srh.noaa.gov/tae/?n=event-20110327-hailstorms . #1 Figure #4. #2 the photo in question. With all the spotter classes and training that the NWS provides, I am baffled on how they can incorrectly label things on their own web page wrong. If figure #4 is a wall cloud then label me the worlds most successful wall cloud chaser. The photo in question, much like the Ft. Leonard Wood one, screamed deception to me the second I saw it. I don't doubt the storm is real, I question the location of the photo. I can't put my finger on it, but I have seen the photo (at least the storm itself) floating around the web elsewhere before.
 
We saw a few LP supercells in Alabama on Saturday. The Shelby County storm actually split when it approached the Georgia border and the bottom storm barely had any precip but it looked really impressive visually (this storm is my avatar). It barely came up on radar it was so LP, but it was gorgeous and it was definitely a supercell. We would have never known it was there unless we were chasing it.

However, the more and more I look at this picture and see the info about the timing... I am starting to think this may be a photo from the west.
 
This is a link to a report on the event posted on the Tallahassee NWS site, and the photo in question is posted there.
Though I cannot say for sure that the photo is legit (Georgia), proms are not uncommon in March around here. I can't speak for this particular school.

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/tae/?n=event-20110327-hailstorms

Here in the Panhandle, we didn't get a drop of rain and the storms stayed north of us. We were in a dry slot between the storms to the north and a cluster of storms over the GOM. We also had a strong SW flow all day, which might explain where the storms got their feed of dryer air.

EDIT: I missed Claytons posting of the link. My bad.
 
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