Tornadoes and Electricity, continued

[JF Massicotte]

What about the polarity shift in storms prior to violent tornado formation. I had the chance to meet Tom Skilling the other day and he brought up how many F5 producing supercells undergo a polarity shift from positive to negative at the time of tornado genesis, with the Plainfield tornado being the best example that comes to mind. Has anyone analyzed the Greensburg storm for a similar pattern?

Also, there are some eyewitness accounts of lightning inside the funnel from survivors that had one pass directly overhead or were inside of it. The first event I remember is from the early 20th century by a farmer who claimed a funnel went overhead and lightning was arcing across it. The other was a teenager who was taking shelter from the Hallam F4. She took claimed looking up into the funnel and seeing lightning arc across it.

Well being just north of Greensburg before the tornado genesis we could observe many CGs. Then we had to move North then East to let the storm pass and then most of lightning activity was in the anvil... very low CG activity after what I now know seemed to be the tornado genesis. Will look further in our videos to see if this change in lightning behavior is noticeable. The 'decrease in CG after tornado genesis' seems to be what we could observe on that night.

 

[rdale]

Also, there are some eyewitness accounts of lightning inside the funnel from survivors that had one pass directly overhead or were inside of it.

If they came from non-mets, that's the same as "non-believe." If she was looking up into an F4 tornado, wouldn't there be a little breeze connected to it? Or did she strap down her belt to the nearest gas line and ride it out

 

[Mike Smith]

The "Weller Method" was the method of supposedly being alerted of a tornado based on electrical interference to your television. It was written up about the same time as the Palm Sunday outbreak. See:

www.motherearthnews.com/Alternative-Energy/1971-05-01/How-To-Track-a-Tornado.aspx

I have attempted to duplicate the results many times and never succeeded.

 

[Shawn Rutherford]

better use for a tv

I would have to think that staring at a blank (or possibly glowing) tv is not going to be nearly as effective... as...


...maybe...

... watching a seasoned meteorologist with live radar, spotters, tower cams, etc.

Not to mention that watching a blank tv is not going to give you direction, intensity, or the many other items that the above met could provide.

 

[T. Mosley]

Feedback and More

Wow, lots of action here - a good sign.

I thank everyone for their interest, opinions, comments, and suggestions. This is one reason that I pose these questions here; I know I'll get good feedback from the chasing community.

But there is a lot more to relate on this subject. Did you know that the Air Force used to fly inside Great Plains thunderstorms like they now do hurricanes? I say used to, for that practice has long since been discontinued due to safety reasons. I have read some of these old flight observations, and they are indeed hair-raising, not to mention extremely interesting.

One such report was from a pilot who reported that the interior of the storm cell suddenly changed from a jet black to a bright yellow, with constant electrical activity also being observed. It was at this precise moment that a tornado was observed to be descending from a wall cloud which had formed.

There is much more to this story, but when this pilot returned to base, it was found that rivet heads had been peeled off of the wings. Someone then decided that Great Plains thunderstorms were considerably more hazardous than those found in a hurricane's squall lines and so the practice was abandoned.

But the point is, here we are again with evidence of some unusual electrical activity associated with a tornado. The pilot reported that it was like a light switch being turned on; there was no slow change from dark to light. The evidence continues to amass if only we can find some correlation. So, if any chasers have any chase observations concerning electrical activity observed, please post them.

 

[Doug Lee]

Did you know that the Air Force used to fly inside Great Plains thunderstorms like they now do hurricanes? I say used to, for that practice has long since been discontinued due to safety reasons. I have read some of these old flight observations, and they are indeed hair-raising, not to mention extremely interesting.

One such report was from a pilot who reported that the interior of the storm cell suddenly changed from a jet black to a bright yellow, with constant electrical activity also being observed. It was at this precise moment that a tornado was observed to be descending from a wall cloud which had formed.

There is much more to this story, but when this pilot returned to base, it was found that rivet heads had been peeled off of the wings. Someone then decided that Great Plains thunderstorms were considerably more hazardous than those found in a hurricane's squall lines and so the practice was abandoned.

But the point is, here we are again with evidence of some unusual electrical activity associated with a tornado. The pilot reported that it was like a light switch being turned on; there was no slow change from dark to light. The evidence continues to amass if only we can find some correlation. So, if any chasers have any chase observations concerning electrical activity observed, please post them.

I knew about these flights. I have an old paperback book from the 1960's, The Thunderstorm, by Louis J. Battan, about this. In the years after WWII, the Air Force and the Weather Bureau teamed up on The Thunderstorm Project, where pilots flew fighters with weather instruments into thunderstorms at different elevations to get an inside look at the guts of the storms. The book didn't go into a whole lot of detail about the pilots' experiences, because the author was a meteorologist and he wanted to focus on the science that came out of the project.

Personally I don't think there is any direct cause and effect realtionship between tornadoes and lightning. I do believe that the the same basic processes that combine to produce tornadoes sometimes generate electrical activity if certain conditions exist.

 

[Greg Stumpf]

I have to wonder, with all the chasers out there now, and with the increasing amount of "night chasing" now happening with the aid of [shall I say, imprecise (be careful!)] in-the-field radar technology, you would think that many would have observed unusual electric phenomena within contemporary tornadoes.

The answer to this has to invariably be - tornado crossing power lines arcing transformers, making the base of the tornado glow. Now that we've all seen many times.

 

[Mark Sundquist]

I would have to think that staring at a blank (or possibly glowing) tv is not going to be nearly as effective... as...


...maybe...

... watching a seasoned meteorologist with live radar, spotters, tower cams, etc.

Not to mention that watching a blank tv is not going to give you direction, intensity, or the many other items that the above met could provide.

Of course this is true today, but that article was written in 1968. My grandfather had saved an article on the Weller method (was from TV Guide I think) that I remember reading as a kid. I have always been curious as to whether there was anything "real" going on with that or not. This whole topic is very interesting...

 

[T. Mosley]

Doug:

Great info there; thanks for sharing. I remember reading these things from decades ago but can't always remember the sources. Some people must think I'm talking through my hat in here, so I am glad to have some corroboration.

I too believe what you state so far as lightning is concerned, but I personally feel that tornadic storms somehow differ from non-tornadic storms in some vital respect, electrically-speaking. More on this coming.


Greg:

You are quite correct in your statement; this 'glow' phenomena should have been more evident during the many night sightings. But, as we know, tornadoes appear in different shapes, sizes, intensities, durations, colors, etc.; why shouldn't they also differ in properties that are not so evident? One aspect of my theory is that certain tornadoes, for whatever reasons, are rogues, just 'different' from others of their kind in some vital respect. The 1925 Tri-State Tornado would certainly qualify here, and maybe in these few others whatever subtle difference there is may be pronounced enough for this 'glow' to be noticeable. If you saw my post on the 1998 Sugar Land F2, I remark that the storm itself exhibited some quite unusual electrical characteristics, this being after the tornado had dissipated. I don't know about before and during as I was not in position to see.


Mark:

Excellent commentary. Chasers today don't appreciate how good they have it compared to just 25 years ago. Like you, I am still wondering if there is anything to this theory. But it should not be difficult to prove one way or another. It seems to make sense, however, assuming that my own theory about these electrical phenomena is itself valid. Like you, I remain very interested.

 

[Dan Dawson]

I have no doubt that there may be some interesting electrical activity associated with at least *some* tornadoes. Electrostatic phenomena due to rubbing of debris and dirt particles against each other is certainly a possibility, as is certain larger-scale changes in electric activity in the storm as a whole as it transitions in and out of the tornadic phase. However, I remain convinced by a wide body of research and my own experience that these are *effects* of the tornado and storm dynamics and not *causes* in any significant way. Yes it's true that electrical activity in even a garden-variety thunderstorm is associated with enormous amounts of energy. However, the amount of energy released due to latent heating in the updraft, as well as the energy extracted from the environmental flow through the updraft-shear interaction is far, far greater. Theoretical, conceptual, and even numerical models of tornadogenesis have been very successful in explaining the energy source for tornadoes soley in terms of the thermodynamics and flow dynamics of the thunderstorm and its environment, without any treatment at all of electrical processes. This is true even though we still don't have a *complete* picture from any of these models of the actual cascade of events that leads to tornadogenesis. We have high-resolution numerical simulations of tornadic supercells that gives us information at every grid point in time and space leading right up to the minute of tornado formation, something we could never have in the real atmosphere, and we STILL don't fully understand how the tornado got there. The point, however, is, that these simulations almost always completely ignore any sort of electrical effects and still produce tornadoes. Thus, I'm convinced that at least in the vast majority of cases, electrical phenomena associated with severe storms and tornadoes are mere sideshow byproducts of the storms, although pretty and interesting in their own right.

 

[Dan Robinson]

The problem with the lightning-tornado relationship is the lack of consistent or credible observations, explanations and/or data to support it, outside of a few isolated non-scientist eyewitness accounts. This is very similar to the ball lightning issue in that a non-meteorologically-educated person, who in most cases may have never seen a tornado before, many times is not able to clearly distinguish a true phenomenon from a look-alike (such as power flashes, in the case of ball lightning). Therefore any such conclusion from an meteorological 'outsider' should be approached with skepticism, particularly if it does not fall in line with known phenomena observations. This is in no way being disrespectful to a non-weather type, in the same way, for instance, that a entomologist would be justified in being skeptical of a rare insect sighting by me, as I know little to nothing about entomology and have no experience in identifying the various insect species.

Nighttime tornadoes have been well-documented in the past two decades, many from close range and many which turned out to be exceptionally rare and strong tornadoes (Greensburg, Mulhall, etc) and experienced chasers have reported no such anomalies.

 

[Laura Duchesne]

When I observed 3 tornadoes from one storm in SD on June 5 last year, I didn't observe any CG activity near the tornadoes. I noticed underneath the wall cloud and precip core area seemed to have a fair amount of lightning activity inside but I couldn't tell what kind of lightning it was, after the third and final tornado had dissipated from becoming rain wrapped. Now, these were just brief tornadoes, but the supercell had pretty decent rotation... I don't know if it would make a difference if the tornadoes weren't rain wrapped instead.

I've seen non-tornado producing storms with more lightning activity, including one supercell in western OK on May 30th last year... some nice CGs came out of that one in the vault area but the storm just produced a small funnel cloud. And then there was the one storm several years back with no precipitation and there was lightning left, right and center on this thing... like every 10 to 30 seconds apart. Quite a show that was!

 

[Glenn Rivers]

Tornadoes and Lighting

I recently came across a very interesting paper in Monthly Weather Review. The article was the result of the IHOP_2002 research about storm electrification.

The research indicates that when the WCD (Warm Cloud Depth) or the distance between the LCL and the zero isotherm in an updraft is less than 2 km, storms tend to produce mostly positive CG's. By contrast, when the WCD is greater than 2.5 km, the storms were always dominated by negitive CG's. In particular, the two cases in this study with the greatest WCD produced by far the most CG activity, most of it negative.

I have a hunch that storms that fall near the edge of the conditions that separate mostly positive storms from negative ones may suffer from conflicting processes that try to place net positive charges on hail and graupel and processes that try to place net negative charges on the said hydrometeors.

Storms that this may have happened to might include the famous April 27, 1991 Andover KS storm. If I recall, that storm went an entire hour during the big tornado without producing more than a single CG+.

Here in Southern Ontario were summer thunderstorms almost always have WCD >> 2 km and are negative storms, I have never seen a severe thunderstorm of any type produce only a single CG in an hour. When deep convection here produces that little CG activity it is almost always because there is just not enough CAPE... i.e. less than 500 J/Kg (most unstable cape)

Some very CG hyper storms such as: OK 1995 "deploy deploy deploy", Fritch TX June 1992 "thought I got struck", KS June 1992? "tornado number ten" (featured on Tornadoes: The entity), and the Mulvane KS storm are all examples of storms that I suspect had a large WCD and were dropping lots of negitive CG's.

The article cited is "Environmental Control of Cloud to Ground Lighting polarity in Severe Storms" in Monthly Weather Review April 2007 pp 1327-1353 by Lawrence D, Carey and Kurt M. Buffalo.

 

[Eric Flescher]

I remember seeing in a book about twin tornadoes that seemed or said they were electrical in nature or had an aura around both of them. Definitely at night but I can't remember the date. I though it had something to do with the fact that these tornadoes could be detected on their TVs for some reason (of course without the pictures on them).
Are these any of what you all are talking about?