I would like your opinions on this....

[Jarrod Barnett]

What is your take on this? Tornado or not? Im saying not!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOa12n_F7sw&feature=youtube_gdata_player

The Cleveland news is calling it one as well as everyone locally. http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/weather...g-high-winds-hail-leave-behind-serious-damage

"In Monroeville, viewers snapped photos and took video of a tornado that touched down in the region. A barn in the area was destroyed, likely as a result of that tornado."


I know who the guy who is taping this. He's been in the local Skywarn class before.

Anyway.... here's the story if you're bored....

Yesterday here in North Central Ohio we had some severe weather come through the area. Full time I am the sales manager at a high performance automotive shop and part time im a fitness instructor. Well with my responsibilities I couldn't chase last night due to having a class to teach.

As soon as I got off work at 5pm at the shop I had been on Radar Scope watching what was going on and due to the path of the storm could tell we would be tornado warned around 6:10pm. At 6pm my class started, 6:06 we got the warning.

Ended class, got everyone to safety.

Skies clear up and I send everyone on their way home and lock up. By this time its just raining and the worst stuff is past us. Talk to my Mom she tells me there was a tornado about a mile from them as that video is about a mile from my parents.

Anyways... im sticking with my original call that this isnt a tornado. There was some damage to a barn and some trees. We received pea sized hail at the gym but there were reports of golf ball size other places. Wind gusts reported of 74mph.

 

[Todd Renshaw]

IMHO, toward the end of the video; no, definitely not. But at the very beginning, is there upward motion? (Hard to tell if it's rotating or just tricks the eye. It's too brief.)

 

[Jeff Duda]

It could've been a short lived, weak tornado. Given its location relative to the clouds above, it could've also been a gustnado. I'm pretty sure by the time the guy got out of town it was already gone.

 

[rdale]

I don't think it's a tornado based on the way it falls apart, but it's a little shaky too tell for sure. Is this along the leading edge?

 

[Jarrod Barnett]

Here is another video I found on the news channels Facebook just now.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10100197413927824

 

[Jarrod Barnett]

IMHO, toward the end of the video; no, definitely not. But at the very beginning, is there upward motion? (Hard to tell if it's rotating or just tricks the eye. It's too brief.)

I really cant tell that for sure either.

I don't think it's a tornado based on the way it falls apart, but it's a little shaky too tell for sure. Is this along the leading edge?

Yes it was.

 

[Simon Andersen]

I'd say vortex for sure, but if you look at the behavior of the trees before he reports this feature they look like the wind is blowing alongside the column, not feeding into it. Plus the "dust-wall" on the right side of the column doesn't feed into it either, thus not a inflow-jet. I'd like to believe I can discern rotation in the parent cloud and the column, but to me the base doesn't scream either up- or down- draft. Is it possibly a gustnado that got ingested and stretched into a tornado by an updraft?

 

[Jeff Duda]

After seeing the facebook video, I'm almost 100% convinced that's a gustnado. The videographer never gets a look much above ground, but given the blowing dust behind it (which looks like it's heading away from the precip) and the interaction of the main vortex with some other sheets of dust makes it really look like a gustnado.

 

[rdale]

I'm with Jeff after seeing the second video too.

 

[Jarrod Barnett]

Well at least I know im not alone now.

 

[Ed Boik]

I agree with Jeff. Gustnado on the leading edge of outflow.

 

[Todd Renshaw]

I like this game! Do we have another contestant and how about some lovely parting gifts for Jarrod?

 

[Jarrod Barnett]

Word is the NWS confirmed it was a EF-1. 100yds wide with a life of 8 miles. Im not sure how they can call its life 8 miles but whatever.

There are no other reported "touch downs" from it, just warnings issued in another county.

 

[Dave Kaplow]

Word is the NWS confirmed it was a EF-1. 100yds wide with a life of 8 miles. Im not sure how they can call its life 8 miles but whatever.

There are no other reported "touch downs" from it, just warnings issued in another county.

Pretty clearly a gustnado, although I admit to retaining a shred of doubt owing to the differential motion in the cloud base seen towards the end of the 1st video, which would seem to indicate at least some broad rotation is occurring in the clouds above the vortex. Also, an 8 mile track length would definitely tend to indicate there's more going on than what we can see in those clips... But yeah, from the videos it certainly looks to me like a nice big gustnado. Now, I'm not at all sure about this, but if a gustnado were to cause Ef-1 or higher damage, wouldn't it probably get rated as a tornado by most NWS offices? If they determined that the damage was caused by rotating winds as opposed to straight-line winds, wouldn't that automatically make it a tornado? Again, I'm not sure about this, but I don't think they have a classification to indicate gustnado damage, so it's conceivable they might recognize this as a gustnado internally but still refer to it as a tornado when dealing with the public and the media, who after all are not usually concerned with such categorical niceties. Maybe someone more familiar with NWS damage survey practices can chime in on this... How would such an event normally get described?

 

[Matt Hunt]

From my understanding of damage surveys, if debris is scattered (indicating rotating winds), it's a tornado. If debris all goes in the same direction, it's straight-line wind damage. For what it's worth:

http://www.weather.gov/glossary/index.php?word=gustnado

Key words in the definition, "they do not connect with any cloud based rotation." It's tough to tell from the video, though if there's rotation in the cloud base above it, technically they'll call that a tornado.