do you chase supercell mergers

[Kevan Wagner]

Last week I was watching the weather channel storm coverage.They had a severe thunderstorm warning on a storm then another storm from the south merged with the warned storm and the warning was replaced with a tornado warning.If on radar you see that two storms are merging how do you know if it will become a storm that produces tornadoes.What can happen when one storm merges with another?Will the become weak or strong.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

It really depends, but cell mergers do have a tendency to enhance tornado risk since you are orienting your shear/vorticity differently with outflow from the other storm. A lot of times a merger will NOT produce tornadoes, but once in awhile it does, like May 29, 2012 in OKC Area.

 

[Tim Paitz]

Same with El Reno because you had several storms merge and that storm kept building to the south. However, that was a pretty volatile setup so a lot of the ingredients were already there for strong/violent tornadoes but the stronger mid-level winds were up in kansas so the storms were already pretty close together anyway.