Tornado Hits North London, UK

Once again the British press use the term mini tornado, whatever that is? Looking at the damage photos appears to have been a brief F1 or low end F2.

Big gusts and pea sized hail still coming down here to the east of London.
 
The BBC's PDF brochure/animated guide "Tornadoes Explained" is pretty pathetic even by British weather educational standpoints. It looks like they are showing us how a landspout forms - rather than a deep-mesocyclone-induced tornado. Of course I don't even know if the British public would know what a "landspout" was - I sure never heard the term when I lived there.

KL
 
Yes the educational PDF is poor, more's the pity.

Whatever the case, it certainly wasn't the landspout variety of tornado that struck London today. Conditions dominated by a lot of active embedded Cb cells running in from the west. High shear frontal conditions.
 
Video of the damage and some more data

Hi all,

here´s a link to some footage of the damage caused by the tornado.

http://news.orf.at/video/iptvpopup.html?London_tornado_wrap.wmv

The cells also moved across parts of the Netherlands and into nwrn Germany. They are very low-topped, most of the instability is confined to the lowest 4 km. However, the wind fields are extreme, with around 45-50 kts at the 925 mb level and 60-65 kts at 850 mb. German weather service has issued warnings with these cells, they are expecting up to 110 km/h winds and they are even mentioning the risk of tornadoes.
This type of scenario with low-topped severe and even tornadic storms is not that unususal in wrn and ctrl Europe. Most of the activity occurs behind the frontal features, on the backside of the synoptic scale cyclone in a well-mixed and very well sheared maritime airmass (mostly a warm mP).

Cheers,
Lars
 
Karen Leszke said:
The BBC's PDF brochure/animated guide "Tornadoes Explained" is pretty pathetic even by British weather educational standpoints. It looks like they are showing us how a landspout forms - rather than a deep-mesocyclone-induced tornado. Of course I don't even know if the British public would know what a "landspout" was - I sure never heard the term when I lived there.

KL
Click to expand...

Hi & Good Evening Karen (and everyone)

Yes, it is a rubbish guide that.

TORRO have a Convective Discussion out at the time and the possibility of tornadoes was and is mentioned.

The area of thundery convection concerned had been travelling across the South of England gathering energy all morning. It dumped over an inch of hail on the M4 Motorway before dropping the tornado over NW London.

Uncertain (at this stage) whether there was a Mesocyclone (likely imo) involved or it was a 'spout. Very similar type damage to the Birmingham event. Winds of imo 110 - 130 mph.

Suffice to say I will inform you of any further developments

Atm...upwards of 700 people are homeless out of this tonight.

It has been a very unstable week with three other recent tornadoes. Last weekend we even had a squall line with bowing segments which took the roofs off a number of houses in Gloucester. Winds were over 90 mph out of that one...in fact 96 mph in one location.

So, we're quite busy atm.
 
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a "mini" tornado is simply a spin-up similar to a landspout (or maybe even a gust'nado). I'm not sure, but that's the only sensible way that I can rationalize such a term... Otherwise, what's the difference between an F5 mini tornado and an F5 large tornado? Does the "mini" series only affect lego mobile homes or somethin?
 
Robert Dewey's amusing response sums up the "mini tornado" issue :).

If the press really were aware of mesocyclonic and non mesocyclonic storms I might accept their use of mini tornado. They might as well just call it a whirlwind.

I suppose my earlier assumption that the London tornado was not a landspout was premature. Haven't seen any soundings but hope the Torro folks might confirm if this particular storm was super cellular (low topped)?
 
The UK has certainly had a number of tornadoes in recent years. Of course, the "global warming question" comes up in the following article. At least they say that it isn't a "mini tornado."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2493251,00.html

I am still trying to find any images or video of the actual tornado. With all the people who have digital cameras or camera cell phones, I am suprised no one got a picture.

Bill Hark
 
I sympathise with using the word tornado in this case because of the strength, even though it 'appears' to be some kind of strong landspout in the technical sense from what I can see.

These kinds of events that occur in marginal convection are tough or even impossible to forecast, and to detect even on doppler.

It's one reason why the forecasters I know do like to draw the distinction between tornadoes and landspouts. Meso tornadoes can be forecasted and warned to some degree. But landspouts, even the violent ones like this cannot be warned.

This I think is one reason for making a distinction between the two types of events.
 
Actually I have been in contact with the paper who published the picture and this images has now been proved NOT to be the London tornado - I was fooled as well :rolleyes:

It would seem at this stage that the tornado remains unrecoreded - given that it would appear that it was rain wrapped
 
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