Clockwise Low Pressure System in the NH?

[Zack Hargrove]

I came across this video while looking over some tropical scenarios and I found this disturbance near the equator from June 2008 that seems to be rotating in a clockwise fashion. This is obviously a low pressure center as well. I understand that the center is very near the equator so there is virtually little to no Coriolis effect. I also know that a system with cyclostrophic flow can rotate in the opposite direction it is supposed to (ie., when a super cell splits in the plains and the bottom cell develops a clockwise tornado because of the rotation involved with the split). I guess my question is, what in the world could have caused this scenario near the equator? There were no major tropical disturbances near that I could find at the time which may have caused an unusual interaction. Could this have been a disturbance south of the equator that crossed the equator (seems extremely unlikely)? Was this a product of shear? Thoughts?

Here is a link to the image:

http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/080627_g12_vis_anim.gif

 

[cdcollura]

Good day all,

The coriolis force has little or no effect near or on the equator.

This is probably a mesolow, like one associated with an anticyclonic supercell, caused by boundary interactions or shearing effect between two wind streams (which can be any rotation CW or CCW).

Very interesting animation, though, and appears to be warm cored in nature!