Ft. Leonard Wood tornado picture perplexing

[Bob Hartig]

Case closed, GTFO, go start a lightbar thread or something.

[/thread]

No sooner said than done. See the B&G.

 

[James Hammett]

I'm not sure how a smooth, laminar feature exists right next to all of this chaos.

...and until I see some reasoning that something like this should exist in such dynamic chaos I see no reason to take blind faith.

So DOS 'NADOES lives on. Or, in this case, quadra-nadoes or more from today's Jackson, MS tornado. I'd say this proves it's possible to have smooth laminar horizontal vortices in the midst of such chaos. Or is that shadows from the powerlines?

Original vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrkzBpeybkc

 

[Skip Talbot]

Horizontal vortices certainly exist in close proximity to a tornado. Its that the feature looks so linear and and glaringly out of place from the original photo. The above video is a great example of how one would expect a turbulent, multivortex tornado to look.

 

[D. Hayes]

10 pages (that I didn't read but did search) and nobody said windshield wiper in motion?

 

[rdale]

Hmm... Did you really go to page 1 and look at the picture in question? There isn't even a car involved

 

[Eddie Natenberg]

Can't wait to give my two cents. I am pretty confident that it looks like a legit Xena type suction vorticity to me rotating around the parent tornado. IMO.

 

[D. Hayes]

haha yea I did. Just because you can't see the hood doesn't mean there was no vehicle. On our flightline we drive step vans with huge windshields that you could get a very similar fov out of. So I'll keep windshield wiper as a viable cause.

 

[E. Clark]

I have the answer. It's a HAARP generated inflow piercing the main vortex.

lol

 

[rdale]

You are certain that you're looking at the first pic in the first post of this thread, and saying it is a windshield wiper?

 

[Skip Talbot]

Sorry for letting this slide for an unbelievably long time. Somebody reminded me of this in the Stormtrack chat and I thought it better to settle this late than never. Several months after the start of this thread, Danny Neal was contacted by the Fort Leonard Wood service member who shot that picture. Danny forwarded me his contact information and I had several exchanges with the service member. Bottom line, he said that feature was in the original photo without explicitly saying it was a physical part of the tornado. He also said he had several more photos of the event that he was going to send me. I was going to post the additional photos and info here, but he never got back to me with the additional photos (maybe couldn't find them?), and while I waited, the whole thing eventually slipped my mind. His replies to my inquiries:

I did see one photo that had a section of the twin..what have been
called vortexes traced in red. If that is what you are referring to. Itwas there all along. I am not storm weather person, I took a series of4-5 pictures. The last one was the best one, all from the same spotoutside. There was no glass or reflection likely to interfere with thephoto process since I was outside. Debris is possible (not likely) but Idid not touch up any photo..if you send me a picture with the area you speak of identified I can compare it to the only original photo.

I looked at the link....that is just like the original.

It would have been nice to see the additional pictures, but after almost two years I think we can say that feature was probably part of the tornado. Many thanks to him and Danny for getting to the bottom of this, and sorry about the delays! What's funny is I saw something very similar this year with the March 2, Henryville, IN tornado. Here's a vorticity noodle coming off the leading edge of the circulation in a similar configuration:

That noodle was very snake/ribbon like and not nearly as linear looking as the one in the original photo, but probably the same process. I'm still perplexed as to why someone took the time to edit out the feature in the photo on the NWS site, but we'll say myth confirmed for real this time.