Tornado in Iraq, 14th April 2016

[Paul Knightley]

A number of videos have emerged showing a tornado in Maysan, SE Iraq, yesterday (April 14th).

Rather impressive!

https://www.facebook.com/amin.a.altaher/posts/1303521392994576?fref=nf&pnref=story

Looks like a warm/moist from the Persian Gulf (18/19C dewpoints) spread north-westwards in advance of an approaching upper trough. 500mb flow was around 50 knots from the SW (all this is from yesteday's 00Z ECMWF as there isn't a great deal of obs data in the area). MUCAPE was progged around 2000J/Kg, so a supercell environment was in place.

As an aside (and perhaps worthy of a different thread) the next week looks very favourable for severe weather in the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta region (Bangladesh and portions of India) - over 6000J/Kg of CAPE progged at times with surface dewpoints of 27C/81F under strong 500 hPa flow.

 

[Willoughby Owen]

Very impressive tornado!! A couple of tornadoes too over on the Iranian side. Here are a few modelled charts from the 14th (though taking the 12Z ones may be a bit late). Nice approaching strong upper trough into east Iraq / west Iran with surface low over northeastern Saudi Arabia.

Impressive showalter indices to -7C, MLCAPE to 2500j/kg, rich moisture transported out of the Persian Gulf deep into northern Iraq, and very agreeable wind profiles meant a good couple days of supercells!

Observed 14/00Z sounding (3AM local time) out of Ahvaz, far SW Iran... 160km SE of tornado location in Amarah, SE Iraq indicated a potent setup for the region:
http://weather.uwyo.edu/upperair/bimages/2016041312.40811.skewt.parc.gif

 

[Willoughby Owen]

Satellite animation of the Middle East, last two days: https://gfycat.com/CapitalOrneryFish (Source: SSEC)

Another view:

And another, nice pan to a secondary tornado!

This one shows the second tornado a lot better (landspout?)

 

[Steve Burre]

Wow - I never thought about the new frontier of tornado chasing in Iraq!! Something tells me that might not be a great idea.

 

[Dan Robinson]

In one of the videos, there were two similar tornadoes ongoing simultaneously. It looked like a 5/19/12 type non-supercell tornado event (high based storms sitting on a low-level convergence boundary). I wonder if they have radar there?

 

[Bob Schafer]

In one of the videos, there were two similar tornadoes ongoing simultaneously. It looked like a 5/19/12 type non-supercell tornado event (high based storms sitting on a low-level convergence boundary). I wonder if they have radar there?

I bet you a lot of nickels that they have radar to identify aircraft. Oh, you mean weather radar? Ha.

 

[Tim Paitz]

There was one tornado in Dolores, Uruguay yesterday. Unfortunately 4 people were killed and 2 kids were airlifted to a hospital in Montevideo. It was rated F2.

 

[joel ewing]

There was one tornado in Dolores, Uruguay yesterday. Unfortunately 4 people were killed and 2 kids were airlifted to a hospital in Montevideo. It was rated F2.

I had a secretary from Uruguay years ago, and she told me that Uruguay gets quite a few tornadoes every year. I found that hard to believe, thinking she probably was referring to dust devils or waterspouts....but in recent years, she has proven herself to be correct. Good job, Helena....you fox, you.

 

[Tim Paitz]

I had a secretary from Uruguay years ago, and she told me that Uruguay gets quite a few tornadoes every year. I found that hard to believe, thinking she probably was referring to dust devils or waterspouts....but in recent years, she has proven herself to be correct. Good job, Helena....you fox, you.

Well, there is an area in Argentina and Uruguay called the Pampas, a flat area much like our Plains that does get frequent winter thunderstorms. The term "gaucho" originates in this area as cowboys once roamed this area.


Another major tornado outbreak happened on April 14th, 1993 called "tragic tuesday" where 300 tornadoes touched down. Buenos Aires get tornadoes every few years actually.