Double anvil on a storm?

Joined
Mar 6, 2007
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Location
Lawrence, KS
Driving towards the storm that would eventually go bonkers, I noticed this feature as I approached the town of Osbourne. It appears to be two separate anvils from the same storm. Has anyone else seen this before? What does it mean?

vlcsnap-7133837.png
 
How far from the storm were you and, which direction were you looking? If your on the South side of the storm, this could very be a developing inflow tail (beaver tail). Just looking at the picture it doesn't look that high up.

Although, If your on the North side, I have no clue. Especially if this was a tornadic storm.

-Eric
 
We were to the NE of the storm looking SW. Sorry, I should have posted a better vidcap but it wasn't a feeder band. It was wrapped around the entire top of the updraft. I'll post a better picture tomorrow after I wake up.
 
The anvil looks to be above and on top. I wouldn't call the lower feature and anvil at least not in the normal sense. Without seeing where the lowered flank and primary core is it's hard to tell for sure, but I'd say this may be part of the extended vault with possible hail failing and lowering LCL's? It doesn't look right to be a Beaver as it isn't linear or laminar. This may also just be a view of part of a currently LP type storm that isn't raining down through and underneath the anvil making more of the downdraft cloud structure visible.
 
On May 12, 2004 I witnessed a younger cell complete with anvil dwarfed by and located beneath the anvil of one of the tornadic monster cells of the day. I wish I had a still or vidcap to illustrate. The new cell's anvil was clearly a typical anvil structure located at a lower level than that of the earlier developing storms. Is it possible that the upper anvil structure visible in your pic is actually from a different storm? They can and often do blow 100+ miles from their updraft point of origin.
 
Seems to me that I have seen a cell with a genuine double anvil, if my memory is correct it was the northern storm on June 10, 2002 in central Nebraska. We were on the southern storm but I remember looking north and seeing two distinct anvils, one right above the other, looked kinda like an anvil sandwich. I remember asking another chaser about it, and being told it was probably the result of two distinct bursts of convection, the first one having produced anvil #1 which sank a bit so that when anvil #2 was produced it was slightly higher up. It's possible I'm confusing that day with another storm but I don't think so... That was my very first trip to the Plains and I asked a lot of questions about a lot of things, the double anvil being one of them. Wish I had a picture, that would clinch it, but I don't. I think this happened relatively early in the storm's life cycle.

Based on that experience I'd have to say that double anvils do happen occasionally, although the one I saw didn't look much like Doug's pic. The main difference being that in my case the anvils were both exactly the same size, and also they were much more wispy then the lower one in the pic. I'm not at all sure the 2 cases are the same phenomenon, in fact I'm skeptical that the lower cloud deck in Doug's pic is even a true anvil, but I had to mention that day because it did seem to be a real case of a double anvil.
 
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