New WX Phenomena... Rickrollers

[Paul Hadfield]

Unless there is a term to describe what we saw yesterday in IL, i'm officially dubbing the phenomena which occurred as "rickrollers". What I mean is that during the passage of the actual cold front, there was a low top moisture starved broken squall line having incredible motion. I was out with my daughter and witnessed this phenomena which is not at all uncommon but has a tendency to get folks excited. It's as though the updrafts despite rapid rolling movement have a hard time going vertical so to wrap up into bonafide mesocyclones. Some do of course manage to go vertical and produce as was the case with the fortunate one we saw but the tendency is to be small and harmless. Adding to the mix is the presence of small needle-like shear funnels along the updrafts base and you can bet the calls start pouring in as what had happened. I even called ILX not as a public service but rather to tell them to step outside since I was just a few miles away from the office and wondered if they saw what was going on. Saw on Adam Lucio's FB status/Danny Neal's blog that SPC issued a MD for this event and on Tom Skilling's blog a wall cloud extending more than 35% to the ground was reported as having produced brief touchdown in Belvidere. Either way, it's always fun for a weather weenie like me but since this spinny phenomena doesn't fall into the category of what is true, what is it called? If I had to sum up yesterday i'd say we were "rickrolled" lol.

Time lapse video of what i'm talking about and no this isn't an April Fools joke

 

[Adam Lucio]

That whole event yesterday was weird. Leave it to Illinois to yet again...

If I didnt know any better and I saw this coming at me, I would be thinking one hell of a storm is about to roll through:

The whole thing lasted about a minute complete with a downpour, some sleet size hail, and one clap of thunder.

Those cloud tops were only 17,000 feet! Imagine if this convection had better dynamic to utilize...oh well, it certainly made things a bit interesting. At the time of the line passing there was a dewpoint spike on the MDW metar of 52, all other areas were reporting upper 40s i believe...the line strengthened after that but then weakened once it moved over the lake. It was better than the miserable cold rain showers that previously fell. Lets see what tomorrow brings.

BTW that timelapse was awesome. That line was so narrow.

 

[Danny Neal]

Awesome time lapse Paul! Adam told me at around 5:30 that storms were coming and I laughed. YEAH RIGHT!!!!! Until I ate my foot and looked at GR3 lol.

I tried to document it. FOUND HERE!

YOUTUBE VIDS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWO96FftqIo and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFT996FKG7U

 

[Steve Miller]

By today's standards, you have about 15 tornadoes/gustnadoes in that timelapse.
In all seriousness, that was a killer vid. I love timelapse, not sure why...

 

[Jarrod Cook]

I still do not believe there was a tornado near Belvidere yesterday. It's funny, Eric Sorenson, the meteorologist at WREX is saying the NWS is wrong, since they do not think there was a touchdown. The only two pictures I've seen, you can not tell whatsoever if it was a tornado or just some low hanging scud cloud, due to the trees and buildings. I also don't know of any damage.

http://addins.wrex.com/blogs/weather/?p=2556

 

[Paul Hadfield]

I know i'm teetering on the edge of this being a reports thread but seriously, does this phenomena have a name? In spite of those cells showing up on radar, the unbroken line of cloud with it's associated motions extended all the way into S IL. It didn't seem to have characteristics of a state sweeping MCS since there was very little if any precip or wind energy nor would I have considered the cells to be individual embedded sup's since they went up but that was pretty much it.

This of course is same direction as was pointed in the video. When I shoot time lapse and know that i'm going to let it go for awhile, I try to compensate for what will be moving into frame instead of starting with the subject in the middle.

This is the main feature coming up from behind us to our left, note the tube which I saw as being an updraft but not funnel

This would be out of frame to the left just moments before the magic moment you saw in the video. Love this pic because my daughter was sitting in my lap as I shot it but for discussion, note the cute but brief funnel over the farm

 

[Dave Gallaher]

Those look like systems I've seen here in north Alabama before.

Do you have any readings on how high the tops were?

We get low-topped stuff every now and then that has really tantalizing structure.

Nice job on those time lapses, by the way.

 

[Danny Neal]

Those look like systems I've seen here in north Alabama before.

Do you have any readings on how high the tops were?

We get low-topped stuff every now and then that has really tantalizing structure.

Nice job on those time lapses, by the way.

IIRC, I read Tom Skilling's blog and he said something about them being 17-19K feet only. There was some lightning up north near the WI state line with these storms, but basically it was a 10 minute shower and some turbulent cloud bases, and then a beautiful rainbow and wind shift!

 

[Darrin Rasberry]

Saw something like this there in Illinois on a random, solo no-computer chase to unwind and unleash stress more than anything on the day after Parkersburg. Front swept through and developed this sort of weak line that produced teensy wall clouds and funnels, occasional squirts of rain, and cute anvils as they died off from the bottom-up. Probably a different type of phenomena, but the look was almost exact that day as it was in your (excellent!) time-lapse.

 

[Paul Knightley]

Was there a fairly brisk wind parallel to the front just ahead of it? If so you may well have got video of misocyclones rolling up the frontal zone - we in the UK are looking at these in more and more detail, as they locally enhance winds, sometimes to damaging levels, and can help tornadoes to form to. They often occur with strong surging cold fronts where there is a marked low-level jet just ahead of the front.

 

[Danny Neal]

Was there a fairly brisk wind parallel to the front just ahead of it? If so you may well have got video of misocyclones rolling up the frontal zone - we in the UK are looking at these in more and more detail, as they locally enhance winds, sometimes to damaging levels, and can help tornadoes to form to. They often occur with strong surging cold fronts where there is a marked low-level jet just ahead of the front.

I didn't look at Central IL near Lincoln, but I noticed an area of fairly backed (SE) wind here in the Chicago area as this line approached. I jokingly told someone "You know what backed winds can do (A reference to the June 7th tornado near my house)) It was more of a SSE wind more SE though. For a period of time Midway Airport, 3 miles from me, was reporting 52/52 with a SSE wind at 16 I believe it was.

 

[Benjamin Rock]

As these rolled thru McHenry County, I was watching them. I saw the MD for it fromSPC and thought, WHAT ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT??? Then I saw it. I was like Oh CRAP! It looked bad, but it was like sleet, funnel funnel funnel, sleet wind rain gone... Then the sun came out. It was very wierd. I was thinking how much it looked like a cold air funnel event. Just plain odd...