Largest/and or tallest Storm You ever Witnessed

[Boris Konon]

As high as 78,000 ft from the monster tornadic supercells in the TX
Panhandle on 6/8/95. I believe I read that in the Grazulis' "Significant
Tornadoes Update: 1992-1995". Radar around 2345z indicated two cells
in the northeastern Panhandle w/ tops to 70,000 ft.

 

[Aaron Wesson]

May 3, 1999 VNX Radar indicated 73,000 tops (I was the operator).. I walked outside and looked STRAIGHT UP and never saw the tops...on sat the overshooting tops were so sweet looking!

 

[Simon Timm]

Oh! I have been looking for pictures like these of that particular supercell. Unfortunately, I was at a party and obviously could not go into full chase mode.

 

[Dennis Dennison]

Living in Ohio in 1974 during the outbreak, HUGE line came in, blocked out the sun on a hazy day-but could see the tops. I didnt know they were going to produce tornadoes, but the sight of a towering vertical looking wall, I still remember.

 

[mikedeason]

There's no such list that I know of. The only source I'd trust is the 1960s-1990s RAREPs from the -57 and -74 network, but I don't know of any archive for that data (amazing that NCDC allowed so much data from the FAA 604 circuits to perish). I could theoretically do this for the NIDS RAREPs, but I don't trust the output, it's not that accurate because of the scan strategy, plus I'm not sure if the WSR-88D is prone to sidelobe contamination from hail and what the RAREP algorithms do about it.

You'd have to go through mountains of microfiched MF 7-60's from the old 57 and 74 sites, which is not a lot of fun.

EDIT: What about archived DIFAX radar summary charts from the pre-NEXRAD era? I'm sure those should be relatively accessible.

 

[Boris Konon]

I was looking through the June 2008 Storm Data (1076 pages!), and
it was noted that w/ a supercell that produced hail over 4" in
diameter in Manhattan KS on 6/2/08 had a 70 DBz core to nearly
50,000 feet!

 

[cdcollura]

Good day all,

Above is one storm, high over the Mexican coast, taken from a Gulfstream IV NOAA flight at 45,000 feet (these are outer bands from Katrina back in 2005). These tops were up to 70,000 feet.

Above, on the same flight, here we are looking down at "normal thunderstorms" with 40,000 to 45,000 foot tops

Above ... The perspective on how high we are, the sky at 45 to 50 K Ft is much darker then we see at 30,000 feet in a commercial airliner.