"New" footage of the early stages of the 1997 Jarrel TX F5

[L Dobson]

Some of you probably know by now and some of you probably don't but new video of the Jarrell Texas tornado in its rope stage had surfaced a couple weeks ago. The motion of it in the rope stage is completely insane imo.

 

[Travis Rogers]

That single vortice may have been an ef3 just from how fast the wind speeds looked at the beginning

 

[Rick Schmidt]

That's 'VORTEX'----not 'vortice'. There is no such word. We use that with an 's' on the end for the plural form, PLEASE.

 

[JamesCaruso]

Somehow it seems even more amazing to see such a narrow vortex sustain itself for so long as compared to a larger one...


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[StephenHenry]

Really cool footage - great find @L Dobson!

If this was a special effects reel for a movie, I love how many "rules" I would criticize it for breaking

1. It's backlit so we are looking west, so the movement must be north to south. Dumb, tornadoes move north or east here.
2. The funnel emerges from a featureless cloud base with no parent circulation overhead - lazy storm structure modeling.
3. At 2:36 the ground circulation is "leading" the overhead vortex. Stupid - everyone knows the ground circulation drags behind the movement of the higher portions of the funnel and the parent circulation.

I'd forgotten how much I want to see a wide, continuous shot of the evolution from that single-suction vortex into the huge F5. Even reading a description of what it looked like from an experienced chaser during that evolution would be great.

 

[Rob Herman]

Really cool footage - great find @L Dobson!

If this was a special effects reel for a movie, I love how many "rules" I would criticize it for breaking

1. It's backlit so we are looking west, so the movement must be north to south. Dumb, tornadoes move north or east here.
2. The funnel emerges from a featureless cloud base with no parent circulation overhead - lazy storm structure modeling.
3. At 2:36 the ground circulation is "leading" the overhead vortex. Stupid - everyone knows the ground circulation drags behind the movement of the higher portions of the funnel and the parent circulation.

I'd forgotten how much I want to see a wide, continuous shot of the evolution from that single-suction vortex into the huge F5. Even reading a description of what it looked like from an experienced chaser during that evolution would be great.

You might want to read this paper on the Jarrell event: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/data/pdfs/ctrltx.pdf
For one thing the tornado moved south and curved to the southwest.

 

[Paul Knightley]

You might want to read this paper on the Jarrell event: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/data/pdfs/ctrltx.pdf
For one thing the tornado moved south and curved to the southwest.

I think Stephen was making the point that this tornado exhibited very odd behaviour.

 

[Rob Herman]

I think Stephen was making the point that this tornado exhibited very odd behaviour.

Okay, sorry to Mr. Henry, I just read it wrong.

 

[GPhillips]

Attached below, hopefully, is the radar loop of the storm from 1938-2054Z from the KEWX radar which is about 70 miles to the south-southwest of Jarrell. Unfortunately, the Ft. Hood WSR-88D (KGRK) was not archiving data at that time. The radar has come a long way since 1997 with super-resolution, faster volume coverage patterns, better range-unfolding and Dual Pol data. No doubt the rotation would have looked much more impressive with super-resolution, and of course, much, much better from KGRK.

Previous thread on this storm is here: https://stormtrack.org/community/threads/1997-05-27-jarrell-tx-f5.17626/

 

[Timothy Schaffer]

I'm amazed to see such a high quality recording for a 97' tornado. Typically VHS camcorders were used at the time. I didn't initially believe it was the Jarrell tornado until I saw the cars. Excellent find!

 

[L Dobson]

I had heard that somewhere there was some footage of the tornado's transition from a rope to a wedge in the one video. I sure hope it surfaces one day!

Edit

Turns out there there is a brief clip in the "Dead Man Walking" documentary of the tornado transition.

 

[KenMcWatters]

Great video. This is not "new" in the sense that clips have been shown on TV, but it's nice to now have the full unedited video. I saw clips of this video on the news right after it happened in 1997. This video was shot by photojournalist Scott Guest from Austin's KVUE... at the time I heard he was on assignment driving to Dallas and stopped when he saw the tornado to film it... thus the high film quality for that era.

Here is the link to KVUE's page about the tornado and the video.
http://www.kvue.com/news/local/on-this-day-may-27-1997-jarrell-tornado/218334926