Anticyclonic Tornado - 18 March 2012

[Jeremy Perez]

One of the interesting revelations I had while watching the ChaserCon presentations was from Dr. Bluestein's RaXPol observations. He was looping some awesome examples of anticyclonic circulations developing south and southeast of a parent mesocyclone. After discussing the El Reno storm, he pulled up a radar loop and photo of an anticyclonic tornado on the gorgeous supercell from 18 March 2012 in Southwest Oklahoma. Kind of blew me away when the photo popped up—'hey I know that snaky funnel!' Catching an anticyclonic tornado was on my someday-maybe wish list, and didn't realize I'd already witnessed one, apparently. I know a lot of people observed and photographed that tornado, but I was definitely too far away to see it as anything other than a silhouette. I need to start scrounging around and see if I can find any closer video that might show motion better.

My distant, snapshot-quality image:

I'm definitely interested in anyone else's experiences with that tornado and whether I'm just pretty late to the game in realizing it was anti-cyclonic. Thanks for any thoughts/photos/videos!

(Also, I could never tell for sure if I was catching tornadic activity on the right side of that wet RFD curtain—looks kind of funnel & debris-ish over there. I think there was a lot of on-and-off touchdowns going on inside the precip before the beautiful cone/trunk touched down about 25 minutes later.)

 

[Jeff Duda]

I have pretty much that exact same picture from just north of your location. I was also surprised to hear him say it was anticyclonic, although I could never visually confirm a touchdown out of it. I saw the mess to the north, too, within that mass of rain. I think other chasers say they saw a nice tornado in there (you had to be west of it I think), so it's possible you are seeing the northern edge of it there.

 

[Marcus Diaz]

I was just south of that tornado. We had hook sliced the storm and come out to that massive precip core and could see the outer edges of a larger tornado. Just before that anticyclonic swung out to the south of the main circulation, it was a solid tube fully condensed just on the west side. By the time we noticed it and pulled over to film, it began disappearing. But it came back while filming that bigger tornado. April 9 of 2012 had a couple of anticyclonic spinups south of Woodward.

 

[Wesley Luginbyhl]

Even from the NE, that larger tornado was impossible to see in the rain at that time. I will have to check my time stamps, but this first picture was really close to when the rope was. The second from when I believe the bigger tornado came out of the rain. That would make that rope my first definite anticyclonic tornado though.

 

[Joshua Nall]

I was to the West of it on Highway 9 looking East and saw it snake down. Zack Hargrove has the closest video of ground circulation of that tornado I've seen. Pretty sure it's the same one. He posted his vid on the reports for that day:
It wasn't much of a touch down and you can't tell much in the video though.

http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/sho...3-18-REPORTS-TX-OK-KS-NE&highlight=2012-03-18