Hey, I'm new here (Cool wall cloud/or not pics inside)

[ahaberlie]

Just thought I would introduce myself.. I am from Wisconsin.. I have a degree in computer science but I am looking at graduate programs in atmospheric science/meteorology because of my extreme interest in the subject and how I can use my computer science background and apply that to meteorology.

I also have a Scud/Wall cloud question for you all.. hopefully I can provide enough information for you guys to get the most accurate answer possible.

The storm started out as an outflow dominate squall/cell cluster that broke up into discrete cells. There was not good evidence of velocity differentials where the storm would be and the reflectivity data doesn't look all that great. However, the pictures I took (At age 15 in 2003) are pretty impressive looking. This storm blew the roof of of a few buildings and was actually tornado warned when I took the picture (from the second story of my house). Now of course you can have false tornado warnings with scud, but I'm wondering what you guys think of these pictures..

For a sense of where you are looking.. the cloud in question is NNW of my postion.. probably less than a mile away.. and is moving left to right in the picture ( W to E )

Sorry for the huge size.. hopefully I don't get kicked off the site.

 

[Mikey Gribble]

Its tough to tell but it looks like you can see the RFD notch punching through behind it. It is difficult to see the wrap around portion on the left side of the notch where you would expect to see a lowering or a tornado. The base doesn't look as big as they normally are with a good tornadic storm, but the structure looks right. You can obviously only tell so much from a still picture, but it looks like a storm that could go tornadic IMO. Call the base whatever you want to, but I wouldn't call that a wall cloud. That is just an updraft base with an RFD notch IMO. I tend to think of a wall cloud as a smaller scale lowering coming out of the base of an updraft around the perimeter of the RFD notch. I'd expect to see it back on the left side of that notch, which isn't really visible with your picture.
Wall cloud gets thrown around pretty loosely any more and I'm no expert on the exact definitions of meteorology terms, but that is my two cents.