Was Mikey Gribble's tornado today anti-cyclonic?

[BBauer]

I was looking at his video posted in the REPORTS thread for today in the Target Area. Unless my eyes are playing tricks on me the tornado (starting at 1:44) looks anti-cyclonic. If I am right, was this from an anti-cyclonic circulation thrown off the bigger cyclonic meso?

 

[J Tyler]

Sorry for lack of detail, but I sent a text to my wife late in the afternoon (5pm???) where I told her there appeared to be an anti cyclonic circulation near Woodward on radar. There was a tornado warning at the time for another circulation close by to the south. It was interesting to see your post....

 

[Bob Hartig]

Sure looks that way to me. I'm a bit surprised that Mikey didn't comment on it when he was shooting the video, but I suppose he had enough to think about. That looks to have been a pretty volatile storm. In any event, he got a nice bit of documentation.

 

[Zach Young]

It's hard to hear it, but at ~2:10 in the video, but says "That might be going the wrong way..." I think further commentary was overridden by the giant wall of doom that was closing in on him at the time

 

[Mark Blue]

I'm pretty good friends with Mikey (via the internet, I've never met him in person), so I'll get in touch with him to see what his thoughts are. We'll get it straight from the horse's mouth (so to speak).

 

[Travis Davis]

I'm pretty good friends with Mikey (via the internet, I've never met him in person), so I'll get in touch with him to see what his thoughts are. We'll get it straight from the horse's mouth (so to speak).

His blog states it is and first one he thinks he has seen.

Loadedgunchasing.com/blog1

 

[Patrick Marsh]

Just for completeness, I've heard several times from various professors at OU that ~15% of all tornadoes are anti-cyclonic. Take it for what it's worth.

 

[Mark Blue]

His blog states it is and first one he thinks he has seen.

Loadedgunchasing.com/blog1

I should have gone there and looked before contacting him. I'll let him know to disregard my email. Thanks for the update.

 

[Bob Hartig]

Just for completeness, I've heard several times from various professors at OU that ~15% of all tornadoes are anti-cyclonic. Take it for what it's worth.

That's not many, but it's more than I'd have expected. I'm willing to bet that of that 15 percent, a much smaller fraction has actually been captured on video. I recall seeing only one video, and it was quite old, decades before hi-def. Mikey's footage not only depicts a rarely-observed phenomenon, but it may well be the clearest video extant of an anticyclonic tornado.

 

[Dave Gallaher]

I remember Jim Leonard having stills of an anticyclonic tornado in the Texas panhandle (IIRC) in the late 1970s. Don't know if he had video or not.

 

[Joshua Nall]

It is very clear video of an anti-cyclonic tornado. I would have assumed the percentage would have been closer to 2% though... of all tornadoes

Of all anti-cyclonic tornadoes I'd also assume most of these would be satellites to a normal cyclonic supercell meso. It makes sense that an anticyclonic circulation could form on the outside of a strong meso especially with a strong rfd.

At a skywarn class here a while back though the presenter shared information about a left split supercell storm that produced an anticlyclonic tornado while traveling 80 miles per hour. I don't remeber the date but I believe it was a couple years back, the same evening when Mena, AR and Shreveport, LA were hit by tornadoes. He was joking that when they gave the warning on the storm that residents would think they had all lost their marbles saying "possible tornado traveling 80mph".

 

[Mark Ellinwood]

Just for completeness, I've heard several times from various professors at OU that ~15% of all tornadoes are anti-cyclonic. Take it for what it's worth.

That seems way too high... I've heard from several sources that the odds are about 1 in 1000. Maybe that's for non-satellite anticyclonic tornadoes only? Given how little video there is of anticyclonic tornadoes despite the fact that we get over 1000 tornadoes in a year, I'd believe the 1 in 1000 statistic.

Yesterday on TWC Dr. Greg Forbes said that the odds were less than half of a percent, or less than 1 in 200.

RE: The video... one of the best examples of an anticyclonic tornado I've ever seen.

 

[rdale]

http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/showthread.php?6516-Anticyclonic-Tornadoes

http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/showthread.php?28440-Anti-cyclonic-tornados

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0493(1980)108%3C1626%3ATICATP%3E2.0.CO%3B2

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0493(1976)104<1186:AAT>2.0.CO;2

 

[Mikey Gribble]

Sorry I didn't get to this sooner. I didn't get home until late from chasing Monday and then I left town at noon Tuesday. Home now though.
Yeah that tornado was anticyclonic. As was mentioned earlier if you listen close in the video I said something about it spinning the wrong way lol. I have bad eyes though, so even though I noticed it was anticyclonic at the time I wasn't certain until I watched the video.
I was so focused on avoiding hail at the time that I never had a chance to put much thought into why it was anticyclonic. I had big hail creep in on me a few times that night and I wanted no part of it lol. On top of that I had zero internet coverage in NW Oklahoma so I wasn't watching grlevel3 or anything like that while I was on the storm. So I am honestly not real sure about what the cause of that was. I don't know much about anticyclonic tornadoes either. I understand the tilting of vorticity and all that, but a question about what actually caused that anticyclonic tornado to occur would have to be answered by somebody a lot smarter than me.
I have heard 1% or less of US tornadoes are anticyclonic, but that again is not something I know a whole lot about.
Thanks for the compliments and interest in the video btw.