Dave Kaplow
EF4
OK, to start with let me state that what I’m about to describe is by far the weirdest thing I’ve ever encountered in more than two decades of closely observing severe weather and related phenomena. At the time I literally could not believe what I was seeing, and I expect you will be a bit suspicious yourself that it happened like I say it did, but I swear to you this is exactly how it was. I saw this last Sunday, while driving to VT on I-91 northbound, somewhere over the VT line where it starts to get mountainous, but I‘m not really sure of the exact location. It was very late in the day, but it wasn’t really dark yet, I’d guess it was probably 7:30 or 8:00-ish, Eastern time. There were some showers around that barely deserved the name thunderstorm, but nothing that I would call severe weather. This is what I saw…
My first glimpse was from a distance of several miles, in the rain, and what I saw looked like a really, really suspicious lowering, in the shape of an upside down mesa or butte, perfectly symmetrical, looming ominously out of the cloud base, but of course I knew it couldn’t possibly be anything really interesting, so I figured it was either an outflow feature or a wet downburst of some kind. The thing is, it kept its shape as I got nearer, and when I finally got a good close look at it I was just stunned, absolutely astonished. In the cloud base there was a large - maybe a mile wide or bigger - vortex-like feature that was just a perfect cyclonic swirl, with beautifully symmetrical curved bands of cloud that spiraled inward, at the center of which was the lowering I had seen, which looked EXACTLY, and I mean EXACTLY like a large truncated cone tornadic funnel. It was rotating, and there would have been no question what it was except that the rotation was just way too slow to be a tornado. The “funnel†had upward motion in it, but again not like you’d see in a real tube. The whole thing was like a slow-motion tornado, perfect in every respect except for the wind speeds. I pulled over and just stared at this thing, it was moving southward and passed almost directly over my head. I’d say the lowering funnel-like part of it was maybe a third to half way to the ground, much lower if you were measuring from the nearby hilltops, which were really small mountains. It was NOT a transitory formation, it held its shape for the whole time I watched, which was maybe 15 or 20 minutes from the time I first saw it up ahead in the rain. The entire time I kept thinking, “What the heck is this?â€
You may or may not know that I’m one of only a very few chasers who don’t feel the need to document everything on film, I don’t even own a camcorder, but let me tell you, this incident has persuaded me that I definitely need one, it’s just killing me to try and describe this thing with mere words. If you saw a picture of it you’d immediately say funnel, big tornadic funnel, but there’s just no way it could have been. Sure, possibly some kind of landspout is not out of the question, but again, I just didn’t see the kind of motion one would expect with a spout, plus the shape was very un-spoutish, more like a big mesocyclone-spawned tornado. Picture Devil’s Tower upside down, that was the shape it had at its closest approach. Very impressive, but I probably would still have shrugged off the whole thing if it wasn’t for the vortex in the cloud base around it - that was absolutely striking, almost reminiscent of a hurricane seen from space, the same kind of curvature and symmetry. I have absolutely no idea how anything remotely like that could have formed in such a little storm cell, there wasn‘t even any lightning that I can remember, just a bit of moderately heavy rain. I am mystified in the extreme as to what it could have been, and would like to hear what you all think. What was this?
My first glimpse was from a distance of several miles, in the rain, and what I saw looked like a really, really suspicious lowering, in the shape of an upside down mesa or butte, perfectly symmetrical, looming ominously out of the cloud base, but of course I knew it couldn’t possibly be anything really interesting, so I figured it was either an outflow feature or a wet downburst of some kind. The thing is, it kept its shape as I got nearer, and when I finally got a good close look at it I was just stunned, absolutely astonished. In the cloud base there was a large - maybe a mile wide or bigger - vortex-like feature that was just a perfect cyclonic swirl, with beautifully symmetrical curved bands of cloud that spiraled inward, at the center of which was the lowering I had seen, which looked EXACTLY, and I mean EXACTLY like a large truncated cone tornadic funnel. It was rotating, and there would have been no question what it was except that the rotation was just way too slow to be a tornado. The “funnel†had upward motion in it, but again not like you’d see in a real tube. The whole thing was like a slow-motion tornado, perfect in every respect except for the wind speeds. I pulled over and just stared at this thing, it was moving southward and passed almost directly over my head. I’d say the lowering funnel-like part of it was maybe a third to half way to the ground, much lower if you were measuring from the nearby hilltops, which were really small mountains. It was NOT a transitory formation, it held its shape for the whole time I watched, which was maybe 15 or 20 minutes from the time I first saw it up ahead in the rain. The entire time I kept thinking, “What the heck is this?â€
You may or may not know that I’m one of only a very few chasers who don’t feel the need to document everything on film, I don’t even own a camcorder, but let me tell you, this incident has persuaded me that I definitely need one, it’s just killing me to try and describe this thing with mere words. If you saw a picture of it you’d immediately say funnel, big tornadic funnel, but there’s just no way it could have been. Sure, possibly some kind of landspout is not out of the question, but again, I just didn’t see the kind of motion one would expect with a spout, plus the shape was very un-spoutish, more like a big mesocyclone-spawned tornado. Picture Devil’s Tower upside down, that was the shape it had at its closest approach. Very impressive, but I probably would still have shrugged off the whole thing if it wasn’t for the vortex in the cloud base around it - that was absolutely striking, almost reminiscent of a hurricane seen from space, the same kind of curvature and symmetry. I have absolutely no idea how anything remotely like that could have formed in such a little storm cell, there wasn‘t even any lightning that I can remember, just a bit of moderately heavy rain. I am mystified in the extreme as to what it could have been, and would like to hear what you all think. What was this?
. Something like an outflow from some convection to the north riding an inversion at around 2k feet could I think do that; but the distance south of Mt. Ascutney makes it less plausible.
