• After witnessing the continued decrease of involvement in the SpotterNetwork staff in serving SN members with troubleshooting issues recently, I have unilaterally decided to terminate the relationship between SpotterNetwork's support and Stormtrack. I have witnessed multiple users unable to receive support weeks after initiating help threads on the forum. I find this lack of response from SpotterNetwork officials disappointing and a failure to hold up their end of the agreement that was made years ago, before I took over management of this site. In my opinion, having Stormtrack users sit and wait for so long to receive help on SpotterNetwork issues on the Stormtrack forums reflects poorly not only on SpotterNetwork, but on Stormtrack and (by association) me as well. Since the issue has not been satisfactorily addressed, I no longer wish for the Stormtrack forum to be associated with SpotterNetwork.

    I apologize to those who continue to have issues with the service and continue to see their issues left unaddressed. Please understand that the connection between ST and SN was put in place long before I had any say over it. But now that I am the "captain of this ship," it is within my right (nay, duty) to make adjustments as I see necessary. Ending this relationship is such an adjustment.

    For those who continue to need help, I recommend navigating a web browswer to SpotterNetwork's About page, and seeking the individuals listed on that page for all further inquiries about SpotterNetwork.

    From this moment forward, the SpotterNetwork sub-forum has been hidden/deleted and there will be no assurance that any SpotterNetwork issues brought up in any of Stormtrack's other sub-forums will be addressed. Do not rely on Stormtrack for help with SpotterNetwork issues.

    Sincerely, Jeff D.

Tornado Formation Graphic

Richard Dickson

Richard Dickson

EF2
Joined
Jan 13, 2008
Messages
163
Location
Casa Grande, Arizona
I came across this short interactive graphical display by accident this evening while looking at some information on the Discovery Channel web site. I thought it was worthy enough to pass along to the rest of the group. It does a very nice job of showing tornadic storm formation in a simplistic manner without being technical. This would be handy to use if you were trying to explain the process to someone with a limited knowledge of storms or a group of students.

I apologize, but you may have to do a ‘copy and paste’ as I’m having trouble getting my hyperlinks to function correctly recently.


http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/storm-chasers/handbook/handbook.html
 
Greg Stumpf said:
If that graphic is intended for the Northern Hemisphere, then they created an anti-cyclonic supercell.
Click to expand...

Yikes!!

Good eye there Greg. In my excitment, I had totally missed that observation. I still think the format is very usable, but it would be worthwhile to point out to anyone looking at it that there is a mistake in its design.

I guess I had better go back to watching 'Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?'
 
They've basically got 1/2 the story right when developing a mid-level mesocyclone in the NH, but they're only showing the anticyclonic member. There's still this idea that the tilting of horizontal vorticity by the updraught ends up with a tornado, when of course it's probably down to the smaller-scale effects of the RFD generating enhanced low-level vorticity, etc etc.
 
Their tornado formation graphics are more hideous and inaccurate than others I've seen. Some sites do better than others, but they always turn the tilted vortex lines into a tornado by some magical process. That "magical" process is why VORTEX-2 is set for 2009 and 2010. We still have a lot to learn about tornado formation.
 
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