Tornado and funnel look-alike examples

[Dan Robinson]

Going through images tonight, I got the idea to start compiling a list of some tornado and funnel look-alikes that might be helpful for spotter training. I'll add to this thread if I find any other good ones.


- July 9, 2012 - Slowly rising non-rotating scud 'shark's tooth' on a gust front.


- May 20, 2010 - Knob Noster, MO - One of the most convincing funnel look-alikes I've personally seen, about 2 miles east of a tornado-warned supercell on a cold core day (at this time a supercell is in the opposite direction, behind me). This feature was located south of a new updraft from storms progressively developing eastward along an occluded frontal boundary.


- May 20, 2010 - Sedalia, MO - Fog tendrils reaching from ground to cloud base near the updraft of a rapidly weakening supercell. I saw this feature about 20 minutes after an actual tornado, produced by the same storm. No rotation or rising motion, just fog hanging in mid-air and barely moving.


June 11, 2004 - Bancroft, IA - Non-rotating outflow feature.

 

[Scott Weberpal]

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/mkx/?n=scary-clouds

 

[Jeff Duda]

The thing about "tornado look-alikes" is that all one usually sees in training is a frozen image. Even a seasoned spotter/chaser might think of some of those images without any context and without motion. However, give them a radar update and synoptic scale setup with a moving image and the accuracy will improve to nearly 100% even for novice spotters/chasers.

 

[Dave Kaplow]

Lots of good examples at The Non-Tornado Page.

 

[Skip Talbot]

July 13, 2004 central IL, non-rotating scud:


April 23, 2010 southeast Nebraska, rain shaft:


April 29, 2010 southeast Nebraska: shelf cloud:

 

[Rick Schmidt]

There has already been a thread on this topic, but I will post these again.




View attachment 7164 View attachment 7165 View attachment 7166

 

[Nicholas_Scherber]

may 1st 2012 wall cloud

 

[Keith Wilson]

The rain shaft was taken in low light and illuminated only once by lightning with a couple of return strokes. You can see the foot extending to the left.
The other two are rising scud with no rotation.

 

[Rob H]

may 1st 2012 wall cloud

Haha, I was thinking that looked *really* familiar, and then I remembered we chased together that day

 

[John Farley]

Thought I would revive this thread after a couple I saw yesterday in NM. To get position on the storm I had to drive some distance through a canyon where I could not see the cloud base, only the top. When I finally got up out of the canyon, this is what I saw:



These were taken looking WNW from a few miles west of Mosquero, NM. I was excited at first and thought I might have a large tornado, but I knew I was too far away to tell, and given the storm's location as I could see on my phone radar (which finally worked again once I was out of the canyon), there were probably spotters closer who would have reported it if indeed it was a large tornado. The storm at this time was somewhere a little SE of Wagon Mound - 30-40 miles away, past a ridge that allowed me to see the base of the storm, but not all the way to the ground. When I got closer and could see the entirety of similar features, it became evident that what was actually happening was that condensation was forming just above a series of microbursts/rainfeet, and then being drawn up into the supercell's updraft. A very dramatic process to witness, but not tornadoes. This supercell was a prolific hailer and probably produced some pretty intense straight-line winds in thinly-populated areas, but almost certainly no tornadoes.

 

[Tim Paitz]

Going through images tonight, I got the idea to start compiling a list of some tornado and funnel look-alikes that might be helpful for spotter training. I'll add to this thread if I find any other good ones.


- July 9, 2012 - Slowly rising non-rotating scud 'shark's tooth' on a gust front.


- May 20, 2010 - Knob Noster, MO - One of the most convincing funnel look-alikes I've personally seen, about 2 miles east of a tornado-warned supercell on a cold core day (at this time a supercell is in the opposite direction, behind me). This feature was located south of a new updraft from storms progressively developing eastward along an occluded frontal boundary.


- May 20, 2010 - Sedalia, MO - Fog tendrils reaching from ground to cloud base near the updraft of a rapidly weakening supercell. I saw this feature about 20 minutes after an actual tornado, produced by the same storm. No rotation or rising motion, just fog hanging in mid-air and barely moving.


June 11, 2004 - Bancroft, IA - Non-rotating outflow feature.

Didn't you have one on your blog that featured a convincing lookalike behind a shelf cloud when you went out chasing in the plains back in May of 2014?

 

[Bob Schafer]

I looked at all the images posted on that http://www.stormeyes.org/tornado/faq/notahose.htm page that Dave Kaplow referenced, and I wish I knew the date of those two from Denver in 1999 (about ¾ of the way down), because if it was June 10 it was the storm that began my chasing career. This image is a vidcap of the FIRST FRAME of video I ever shot.... from that very same storm, perhaps? It was also NOT a tornado, though I didn't know that at the time!



On May 27, 2001, still a noob, I caught these images right over Dodge City. I reported this feature as a tornado on ST, and when I later learned it was NOT a tornado I found the humor in my mistake and assumed the ST username "ScudStudBob" for years until real names became required.

 

[Andrew Clope]

Man, I'm not going to lie, some of the photo's in this thread would absolutely fool me if all that I had to go off of were these static images...

 

[Dan Ross]

Many of these are very convincing. I recall on some of my first chases debating with myself whether or not I had seen a funnel cloud. I think for someone new to chasing/spotting, the most important thing to realize is that no matter how pointy, vertical, and/or low to the ground a cloud is, if it isn't spinning, then it's simply not a developing tornado. Images then, lacking motion, can be very misleading and are in my opinion far less valuable than videos for spotter training purposes. On the contrary, if viewing from a great distance, cloud motion can be difficult to discern, in which case images would be more helpful. They can still show structural/contextual clues in the clouds that help a spotter to make an educated decision regarding a possible funnel cloud.

 

[calvinkaskey]

Inflow into a minimally severe but fairly rapidly rotating supercell in New York. Behind it I'd bet money there was a real funnel but I was so focused on the front feature. Tornado warning just 5 minutes before and several funnels reported with this supercell with a later tornado in an associated line.