Tornado Formation Graphic

[Richard Dickson]

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]

If that graphic is intended for the Northern Hemisphere, then they created an anti-cyclonic supercell.

 

[Richard Dickson]

If that graphic is intended for the Northern Hemisphere, then they created an anti-cyclonic supercell.

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?'

 

[Derek Mohr]

Wow yeah, I completely missed that one too, oops.

 

[L.B. LaForce]

haha, that's hilarious, never noticed it before myself either, as Ive looked at it a couple months ago.

 

[Darrin Rasberry]

structure on that sucker looks like the storms I catch

 

[Paul Knightley]

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.

 

[Bobby Prentice]

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.