Most impressive rope-out

[Karen Politte]

I think this picture I found on Jimmy Deguara's Australia Severe Weather has to be about one of the most impressive rope-out photographs I've ever seen:

This tornado occurred on November 5th, 1995 in Merriwa, NSW, Australia and was captured by Mike Hadfield.

Look at that stretching! :shock:

Well done to the amateur photographer - capturing THAT on slide film without any prior warning or experience is no mean feat. I'd give up quite a lot to see something like that.

Karen

 

[John Hudson]

That's definitely a noteworthy tube, Karen. Think the photographer earned some bragging rights?

 

[Jimmy Deguara]

Hi Karen,

I had no idea that the picture was being discussed on here until someone told me. Great! Not mine of course I was not chasing outside Sydney at that point in time.

The picture as most of you would have realised is a scan from a slide! For those interested, more photographs of this tornado are available from this page:

http://www.australiasevereweather.com/tornado.htm

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

 

[Chuck Vlcek]

I didn't see this thread until just now, hence the late comment. This looks a lot like the "S-funnel" I saw associated with the meso that produced a rain-wrapped wedge near Jamestown, KS on May 29, 2004. Bill Hark posted a distant shot of that funnel from the south. My chase partner Rich Halter and I were quite a bit closer to it. In fact, it appeared to be coming right at us before its true shape was apparent and we had to move out of the way. I was driving east (I think) and the funnel seemed to reach out for us but the tail end was a short ways to the south where I could see it out the side window. I wanted Rich to take the shot but he had back and neck problems so he couldn't twist around. All the good pulloff spots were already taken by other people, and by the time I finally found a place to park, it had mostly retreated. Yeah, I could have stopped in the middle of the road like some of the Yahoos some chasers had been complaining about and gotten a shot very much like the one posted at the top of this thread (minus the building and evident ground contact), using my 5 megapixel Sony DSC-F707. It was very, very frustrating, first having the much anticipated wedge rain-wrap, then this. I'm really amazed no one else posted a shot from my area since there were at least a half dozen vehicles nearby -- maybe locals rather than chasers.