Help. What the @%&! is this?

[Danny Neal]

i think its possible had the fire been large enough, i have a video on different vortices and in one video it said if the fire is large enough it creates its own air mass and even its own thunderstorms

 

[Dan Robinson]

We need more pictures. I'm skeptical about a tornado, but something producing that much smoke should have some flames or at least a glow from the fire visible.

 

[MatthewCarman]

What about the darker clouds on the top left then? There could be a thunderstorm we cant see near by.

 

[scott r currens]

I guess it's possible but I don't see any evidence of a fire.

The vortex looks a lot like this tornado on Doswell's site.

Scott Currens
www.violentplains.com

 

[Brian Emfinger]

i think the hill in between is hiding the flames.. you dont have to have flames really high to get that much smoke.

 

[MatthewCarman]

I see dark clouds to the top left and see rotation with a big vortex. (Did I say that right?) I see no evidence that this is a fire unless the flames/red glow is below the hill. In any case this to me looks to much like a tornado.

Scott Currens shows a good example of a tornado look alike.

 

[Jeff Miller]

The reality is there is simply insignificant information to come to any sort of a logical conclusion to the exact nature of this phenomenon.

We will need to obtain, as has been previously stated, either a series of photographs of the event, the EXACT date and time that this occurred, and/or obtain a wider shot of the entire structure of the event. At the present time with the singular photograph that we observe, all we will continue to do is to guess and, to be honest, throwing a dart blindfolded would yield just as good a guess.

Looking solitarily at this picture, it can go any direction. There is what *appears* to be a cloud base, albeit high, above the area of interest. As what was previously stated, the rich dark material indeed suggests smoke so we can't rule anything out or conclusively prove anything. What I will say with certainty is that this photograph is, indeed, fascinating, and I am hoping somebody will come out with more information so we can figure this bad boy out and rest this case.

 

[MJ Poore]

I am afraid its all the info I have. The sand in the area is light red, but there are coal mine spoil dumps in that general area as well which could give it the dark color. I think the fire devil idea is interesting, but it would need to be a petrol fire to create that colour, grass or bush burns white smoke.

It is indeed mysterious. I am tending toward a nado given the instability on the day. But if it is a fire devil, it's a very big one.

 

[Andrea Griffa]

I see dark clouds to the top left and see rotation with a big vortex. (Did I say that right?) I see no evidence that this is a fire unless the flames/red glow is below the hill. In any case this to me looks to much like a tornado.

Scott Currens shows a good example of a tornado look alike.

It's what I was thinking about before making a contrast to the picture.

Guys, if you see the top of the vortex it seems that there's a large funnel but with more contrast you see that that isn't a funnel but it's probably smoke (taking apart the dark color of the vortex that it's more similar to the smoke color than dust color).

 

[scott r currens]

The individual who emailed described it as a tornado (not in English). He or she has not returned any contact or name. Even the area is vague, just south of a place called Heidelberg, outside Johannesburg. It's just bush out there.

The only other clue was some metadata on the photo, it was taken on 8 Jan 2005 at 4pm.

What did the South African Weather Service say about the report? Were there storms in the area that day?

The person that took this picture had an excellent view the vortex. They could see the situation evolve in time and space as well as see everything that is outside the image. They reported is as a tornado! I just don't see anything in the image that says otherwise.

I don't think this is a fire vortex because there isn't any smoke rising outside of the vortex. I have never seen a fire vortex that ingests all of the fire's
smoke into the vortex. Look at Mike U's fire vortex

It would be nice if we could get a radar or satellite loop so we could at least know if thunderstorms occured on 8 Jan 2005.

Scott Currens
www.violentplains.com

 

[John Diel]

I think I'm going to chime in here. Just for grins and giggles as it were.

I really think we're looking at a vortex of some type. Either a very large dust devil or a tornadic vortex. Here's why:

Looking at the conditions posted, you have all the elements needed for a tornadic thunderstorm. Looking at the hill just below the vortex, the ground/soil appears to be the color of the dust in the cloud we see. The sides show the smaller debris thrown out in similar vortices we see in Western Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Just because we don't see a condensation funnel extending further up, does not mean that it doesn't exist. What we can't see is the parent storm structure. The only clues that there is sufficient instability to produce a TOR are the cloud formation we can see in the background and the information posted. This looks like farmland and yes, there is a lot of red dirt in Oklahoma, but we DO see dark debris fields like this, when a vortex moves over a cultivated area. The color will change with the soil being ingested and blown around. This can change from field to field. It can change drastically within a mile.

Here's why I don't think it's smoke:

It's certainly not a grass fire, as there is no surrounding smoke or flame over a large front. It could possibly be a dust devil moving over a tire fire, but we still don't see associated flame. A fire to produce that much smoke to be ingested into a vortex, would have had to be burning for a period of time and we would see a smoke column associated with the vortex. There would also most likely be "drifting" smoke from the fire from the prevailing wind fields and the conditions that produce the dust devil vortex to begin with.

As with everyone else though, We really need to know more and "see" more about the conditions present at the time. However, that's my SWAG.

John Diel

 

[scott r currens]

If that is a dust devil it is in the top 1% of all dust devils. You can use the power poles and trees in the forground to get an idea of its size.

Scott Currens
www.violentplains.com

 

[Paul Townsend]

Definitely a tornadic vortex. It has the look of dirt/debris versus the look of smoke. Both could be the same black color, but this has the look of the more coarse dirt/debris entrainment versus the finer look of smoke particle entrainment. Plus, it looks strikingly similar to the Ash Valley, KS tornado of the 1970's (I believe 1974) that was famously captured on 8mm film. And its size rules out dust devil formation.

 

[MJ Poore]

What did the South African Weather Service say about the report? Were there storms in the area that day?

The person that took this picture had an excellent view the vortex. They could see the situation evolve in time and space as well as see everything that is outside the image. They reported is as a tornado! I just don't see anything in the image that says otherwise.

I don't think this is a fire vortex because there isn't any smoke rising outside of the vortex. I have never seen a fire vortex that ingests all of the fire's
smoke into the vortex. Look at Mike U's fire vortex

It would be nice if we could get a radar or satellite loop so we could at least know if thunderstorms occured on 8 Jan 2005.

Scott Currens
www.violentplains.com

They say it's a nado. They only keep the radar loops for a week. So there were no radar pics from the time. They are very used to all sorts of tornado reports and generally the only time they do site investigations is when there is loss of life or it's a major urban area that takes the hit. I did an investigation for them in January this year where an F3 blew a small village away in the middle of nowhere, 1 death, 25 injuries, it barely even made the news. There was another report recently, for example, where an electricity utility company phoned up to say that 2 twenty ton pylons out in the bush got picked and thrown about 50 meters. The forcasters looked at the radar loop and there was supercell there, so yep, that was a tornado of some sort drilling away in wilderness.

 

[Pat Lawrence]

For those interested in LARGE full disk meteosat images for this date they are available here for free at nearly full resolution:
http://www.sat.dundee.ac.uk/

The S. African storms show up.

You have to do a free registration (don't worry it is a painless registration).

It is a great archive that goes back ~6 years and includes all images received by the Dundee, UK station -6-hour time frames.

I would have posted the pics myself, but I wasn't sure if it is OK to post them on the forum. They are so big they would have messed up the thread anyway..

Pat

Edit: I was just looking through the links for the date mentioned, and imagery is available every three hours if one goes into the 1st generation Meteosat archive. Water vapor is all that is available for the 3 hourlies, however.